The Government has published its Draft National Planning Policy Framework for England which proposes abandoning all remaining pro-brownfield policy and reduces planning guidance on contaminated land to half a sentence.
The draft confirms the very worst fears of those who believe the Government is hell-bent on ending the planning system's ability nationally to pursue sustainable spatial development and to use it instead to promote greenfield sprawl.
The Impact Assessment published with the consultation draft dismisses brownfield policy as a "blunt tool" which has constrained development and increased housing densities.
The Draft NPPF closely follows that of the recent Practitioners' Advisory Group draft and repeats its reduction of guidance for planning and contaminated land to one bullet point.
"Local policies and decisions should ensure that... the site is suitable for its new use taking account of ground conditions, pollution arising from previous uses and any proposals for land remediation," it says.
And like the PAG proposal, the draft NPPF includes only one reference to brownfield land - to confirm that development should be allowed on brownfield sites in green belt areas.
Otherwise references to previously developed land are restricted to a furious onslaught in the Impact Assessment on policies to promote it.
It quotes Kate Barker's 2003 interim planning report to claim brownfield policy has the effect of increasing the price of greenfield land and windfall gains to owners and says councils' stocks of brownfield land is variable.
"Today's proposals set out national planning policy more concisely, and in doing so make clearer the importance of planning to safeguarding our extraordinary environment and meeting the needs of communities, now and in the future," said decentralization minister Greg Clark.
The Assessment says 27% of councils currently have less than five years' supply of brownfield housing land (a tacit admission that 73% have more than five years') and that the supply of brownfield land is dwindling.
It says "plausible assumptions" show the current 60% brownfield housing target would cease to be sustainable in southern England by 2016 and house prices would rise.
It says a rigid focus on brownfield has pushed up land prices and increased differentials in price with greenfield, but it admits the policy has succeeded in making better use of land by pushing up density levels, although it claims this "has potentially constrained growth in some areas".
It wants to replace the policy with a vague concept of "developable" land where local areas decide suitable locations for new homes.
A few elements of town-centre first policy would survive but the Draft warns that local plans must not compromise retail or leisure needs by restricting land availability.
Councils would have to retain a sequential approach to planning retail and leisure uses not in existing centres or local plans and would have to require impact assessments for out-of-town developments above 2,500m².
Business secretary Vince Cable who, along with communities secretary Eric Pickles, has stressed the need to weaken the planning system to promote development, also welcomed the Draft which he said is a key element of the plan for growth.
"Along with the powerful presumption for sustainable development, the new approach to planning will be a significant step forward in creating the right conditions for businesses to start up, invest, grow and create jobs," he said.
Comments on the documents are required by 17 October.
