National Planning Framework version 4

Julian Morris

After a fairly lengthy passage through Parliament, the revised National Planning Framework version 4 (NPF4) was adopted in February 2023, and the Chief Planner wrote to all Scottish planning authorities to tell them to give it immediate effect.

What on earth is an NPF, you might ask? I will tell you, because unfortunately the document itself does not. Skim read the following paragraph if you wish, but be under no illusion, this document and its policies are here to stay and it will affect every planning application in new ways from now on. Here’s the detail if you need to come back to it later …

Inserted into the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 by the Planning (Scotland) Act 2006 was a new section 3. It says that ‘There is to be a spatial plan for Scotland to be known as the “National Planning Framework”.’ It then says that ‘The National Planning Framework is to set out the Scottish Ministers’ policies and proposals for the development and use of land’ and what it must contain. This includes (amongst several other things) how the Scottish Ministers consider that development will contribute to each of the outcomes listed. Amongst several (again) outcomes is ‘securing positive effects for biodiversity’. Somewhat imprecise, but here amongst its dense and spreading roots is something we can grasp.

Implications for trees and woodlands

This is where national politics meets planning. The legislation and Framework are dense and far-reaching and symptomatic of the Scottish Government’s commitment to climate action. The implications for trees and woodlands are only a small part (and I concern myself in this article mainly with that small part), but they are treated with a potency previously unseen in Scottish planning policy. A simple measure of this can be found in a search for the words ‘trees’ and ‘woodlands’. In the previous NPF (version 3, 2014), remarkably each appears only once. Do the same search with NPF4 and the tally is 27 and 58 respectively.

I must add one more reference to legislation, because the Framework without legal force has no force at all. In 2019 another Planning (Scotland) Act solidified the status of the NPF by saying (s.16) that ‘In preparing a local development plan the planning authority … are to take into account … the National Planning Framework.’ And just to be sure, it later says (s.24) that the local development plan for an area includes the NPF. In fact, it trumps any earlier or lesser local planning. So, there we have it: the NPF rules. And, since all planning applications have to be decided based on the development plan, here’s the punchline: NPF4 is a primary consideration for every planning application from now on, more so than NPF3 ever was.

Now, this could be a good thing because it can give consistency to planning decisions that otherwise can be notoriously mired in local issues and priorities. On the other hand, if it is poorly defined and one-size-fits-all it will do no favours to anyone. More on this presently.

Policy document

Diving into the Policy document itself, the first part is National Spatial Strategy. I’ll gloss over this, because it has no substantial tree or woodland issues.

The second part has three themes: Sustainable Places, Liveable Places and Productive Places. Here are the written policies, all 33 of them. I’ll only look at two, although as might be expected they all overlap and are linked by cross-cutting themes. The rest of the document is taken up with Annexes, which I will refer to as required.

The policy of most obvious interest to arbs is Policy 6: Forestry, woodland and trees. The policy’s intent is to protect and expand forests, woodland and trees, with the outcomes that existing woodlands and trees are protected, and cover is expanded, and that woodland and trees on development sites are sustainably managed.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is stated that ‘Development proposals that enhance, expand and improve woodland and tree cover will be supported.’

Equally unsurprisingly, but bluntly stated: ‘Development proposals will not be supported where they will result in:

1. Any loss of ancient woodlands, ancient and veteran trees, or adverse impact on their ecological condition;
2. Adverse impacts on native woodlands, hedgerows and individual trees of high biodiversity value, or identified for protection in the Forestry and Woodland Strategy;
3. Fragmenting or severing woodland habitats, unless appropriate mitigation measures are identified and implemented in line with the mitigation hierarchy;
4. Conflict with Restocking Direction, Remedial Notice or a Registered Notice to Comply issued by Scottish Forestry.

In what amounts to a restatement of existing government guidance, ‘Development proposals involving woodland removal will only be supported where they will achieve significant and clearly defined additional public benefits’. This includes ‘Where woodland is removed, compensatory planting will most likely be expected to be delivered’.

Development proposals on sites which include an area of existing woodland or land identified in the Forestry and Woodland Strategy* as being suitable for woodland creation will only be supported where the enhancement and improvement of woodlands and the planting of new trees on the site (in accordance with the Forestry and Woodland Strategy) are integrated into the design.

The next most obvious policy for trees and woodlands is Policy 3: Biodiversity, with the Policy Intent: To protect biodiversity, reverse biodiversity loss, deliver positive effects from development and strengthen nature networks. ‘[Major] Development proposals will contribute to the enhancement of biodiversity, including where relevant, restoring degraded habitats and building and strengthening nature networks and the connections between them. Proposals should also integrate nature-based solutions, where possible.’

Note the word ‘contribute’. The extent of the contribution is to depend on the scale of development. Major development proposals will only be supported ‘where it can be demonstrated that the proposal will conserve, restore and enhance biodiversity, including nature networks so they are in a demonstrably better state than without intervention.’ This is similar to, and firmer than, England’s requirement under its longer-established National Planning Policy Framework: ‘planning policies and decisions should … identify and pursue opportunities for securing measurable net gains for biodiversity’. In England the process of measuring a site’s biodiversity before and (proposed) afterwards to achieve ‘Biodiversity Net Gain’ is evolving quite rapidly, and it is inevitable that something similar will be required in Scotland.

Back in Scotland, for smaller developments the requirement may be a little less exacting: ‘Proposals for local development will include appropriate measures to conserve, restore and enhance biodiversity, in accordance with national and local guidance. Measures should be proportionate to the nature and scale of development. Applications for individual householder development … are excluded from this requirement.’

What do the policies mean?

All fine words and intentions so far, but what do they mean, in the day-to-day context of submitting or determining planning applications?

Ancient woodlands – NPF4 comes up with a new definition of ‘ancient woodland’: ‘Land that has maintained continuous woodland habitat since at least 1750.’ Why 1750? That is the time of the first reliable local mapping of Scotland (for military purposes by surveyor William Roy), the precursor to the Ordnance Survey system that led to the first OS series of maps in 1860. This breaks slightly with the definition that exists in the government’s Ancient Woodland Inventory and appears to exclude woodlands only mapped since 1860 and some Plantations on Ancient Woodland Sites (PAWS). The definition is somewhat artificial, as many of the woodlands that come within it might not have any ancient origin or any surviving ancient habitat.

Ancient and veteran trees – NPF4 does not define ‘ancient trees’. It attempts to define veteran trees in a loose and imprecise way: ‘A veteran tree can be classified as such due to age (including relative age for its species) or for its biological, aesthetic, or cultural interest. Veteran trees are usually mature and provide additional habitat from natural damage, environmental conditions or management (e.g. coppice, decay hollows, fungal fruiting bodies, cavities).’ If this is to be called a definition, it differs from any previously published one, but partly resembles the Ancient Tree Hunt (2008) definition of ‘ancient’ (NB not ‘veteran’) trees.

Ancient or veteran? As the Framework treats both the same, the distinction is (to it) unimportant. Perhaps, by accident rather than by design, this is reminiscent of the title of the Ancient Tree Forum book edited by David Lonsdale, Ancient and other veteran trees…, where age is only one basis for a tree developing desirable veteran tree characteristics.

The table below indicates the size at which the more important species might achieve notable, veteran or ancient status. This shows that a one-size-fits-all classification of ‘ancient’ or ‘veteran’ would be rather meaningless.

High biodiversity value – unfortunately this is not defined. It is perhaps unsafe to equate this to ‘high nature conservation value’ as used in Forest and Woodland Strategy legislation, which also is undefined.

One gets the general drift, but the basis is not there for proving or disproving that any woodland or tree falls within the grounds under which NPF4 presumes against planning permission. This is a missed opportunity to consolidate and cross-refer definitions.

Inevitably there is now a basis for arguing that any development does or does not fall on either side of these vague watersheds. There will be much at stake in some cases, including planning permission itself.

The alternative is to assess them as matters of degree rather than as binary yes/nos. Is a tree either ancient or not ancient? Is an area of trees a woodland or not a woodland? Is it either ancient woodland or not? The reality in almost every case is that it is partly so and partly not, and that in its context this might make some or other level of contribution to diversity, quantitatively or qualitatively, now or in the future.

In fact, this is what the English biodiversity metric attempts to do. It provides a basis for totting up the ‘before’ biodiversity of a site and comparing this with the calculated ‘after’ biodiversity, with the ultimate aim of showing a net positive change.

The arithmetic is fairly simple. Biodiversity = Superficial area × distinctiveness × condition × strategic importance. But choosing the appropriate inputs is much more difficult. And when it gets complicated, the metric admits that ancient woodland cannot be measured, much less individual trees. The English metric also does not have the facility to measure some of the Scottish habitat types. Thus, we have no calculator and no common units of measurement or value.

Anyone familiar with environmental impact assessments may have experienced the difficulty in determining the baseline quality and quantity of habitats and predicting objectively the magnitude and significance of change that will arise from a development. As with the biodiversity metric, summing, trading or converting the value of individual habitats in a mosaic cannot (and should not) be done.

Even at the individual tree level, the greatest minds in the field have been able only to create a ‘specialist survey method’ for recording the quantity of veteran features for any given tree, and further attempts to use these to define subsets of veteran trees are laudable but ultimately artificial; certainly, they are not convertible (how many water pockets equal one dead branch, for example?) within the same tree, never mind between trees. The difficulties grow as the whole tree area is taken into account. Context is everything. For example, the only ancient tree in a woodland cannot pass on its ecosystem to successors if all the other trees are semi-mature or of a different species.

Arboriculturists frequently help inform the development process by providing BS5837 surveys and tree constraints plans, and later by assessing the impacts of a particular development form and by specifying protective measures. These can be used by planning authorities to approve or refuse applications and to apply planning conditions to give effect to the protection. But can this provide designers and decision-makers with useful information about the biodiversity value (in a non-fiscal sense) of the site before and after development?

From its earliest form (1980), the Standard has been primarily about the combination of visual amenity and remaining contribution. The 1991 version added the now familiar categorisation, again based primarily on visual quality. The 2005 version introduced the subcategory distinctions between ‘mainly arboricultural values’, ‘mainly landscape values’ and ‘mainly cultural values’, and made reference anew to veteran trees as an example of the last subcategory, saying that ‘most genuine veteran trees are likely to be included in category A3’. The unhelpful ambiguities are continued into the current (2012) version, giving no guidance on whether ‘conservation’ is of the nature kind or of the built environment kind. Or both. However, it is clear that as a tree deteriorates through category A, B and C it can eventually jump straight to Category A again if ‘veteran’. It is quite frankly going to be of no practical use in informing biodiversity evaluations of individual trees under NPF4. And it would be a brave assessment that attempted to treat woodlands as a Category A1 (or any other category) group!

The British Standards Institution is currently deciding whether to issue a draft revision of BS5837. The Standard already requires tree categorisation to juggle quality, prominence, expected remaining contribution, rare or unusual species and conservation (not defined) value. It cannot possibly use the categorisation also to represent the relative (never mind absolute) biodiversity value of individual trees or groups.

For larger woodland-scale units, we cannot simply piggyback onto the English biometric. Our definitions, the legislative basis and our habitats are different. And besides, England has so far side-stepped the difficulty of assessing the relative biodiversity value of ancient woodlands, and so far no-one has achieved this for smaller units, down to individual tree level. And who can blame them? It’s going to be difficult, and unless it is done to an agreed standard it will mean little.

It is dangerous to put too much stock in the Ancient Woodland Inventory (AWI) as proof of ancient woodland biodiversity; too often it is understood as a ‘designation’ or ‘proof’ of ancientness. The AWI definitions almost prove the fallacy, since LEPO (Long Established of Plantation Origin) woodlands have never been ancient, yet PAWS (Plantations on Ancient Woodland Sites) are not in the inventory but are likely to be more habitat-rich.

Almost as soon as NPF4 was adopted, an appeal decision relying on it in East Renfrewshire found that the AWI is not a designation of ancient woodland; it is merely a prompt to look more closely for tangible clues of ancient or quasi-ancient woodland habitat and its restoration potential (see table above).

Back to the British Standard. Whether or not we have a new one or an impossibly complicated revised BS5837, it may have to make distinctions between standards for England and Scotland. With imminent important changes to the Welsh planning system, another regional distinction might be needed there.

NFP4 is here to stay, with its embedded imprecisions and flawed definitions and beyond the scope of an already-stretched BS5837. It will affect all future planning applications to some degree, down to the individual tree level. Are we up for it? Are we up to it? And how?

* Forestry and Woodland Strategies are new on the scene too. The requirement for councils to draw these up was introduced by the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019. They could be the subject of a whole separate article, but in essence they require each council to ‘identify woodlands of high nature conservation value’.

This article was taken from Issue 203 Winter 2023 of the ARB Magazine, which is available to view free to members by simply logging in to the website and viewing your profile area.