Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether policy, guidance and coding restrictions on style will be (a) based on the outcomes of a transparent, explicit and comprehensive consultation with the relevant local authority and (b) expressed in clear and unambiguous terms.

The National Planning Policy Framework indicates that visual tools such as design guides and codes should be prepared either by local planning authorities with the involvement of the local community, or by local communities themselves through the neighbourhood planning process. Such documents should set clear expectations, so that applicants for planning permission have as much certainty as possible about what is likely to be acceptable, while allowing a suitable degree of variety where this would be justified.