2026 NPPF: Five Key Changes for Landscape Planning

By Andy Cook, Executive Director of Environment at Pegasus Group 

 

The 2026 National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) introduces vital updates to the landscape planning perspective, and there is plenty to unpack.  

Above all, the changes we’ve seen require a landscape-led approach to plan-making that ensures site character and environmental context are considered from the start.  

These are the five key policy updates that stand out:  

1. Landscape character and visual amenity  
2. Protected landscapes  
3. Trees, woodland and climate resilience  
4. Green Belt and Grey Belt  
5. Green infrastructure and nature-based solutions.  

Below, we unpack each of these in detail.  

 

Landscape character and visual amenity  

The natural environment policies explicitly consider the environmental qualities of land, including landscape character and the countryside’s natural beauty. Understanding a landscape’s character and qualities remains fundamental to considering how development can be successfully accommodated.  

• Landscape character is now expressly referenced. The new natural environment policy specifically identifies landscape character as one of the environmental qualities of land to consider in development proposals. This is an important change in terminology. The December 2024 NPPF referred to the “intrinsic character and beauty of the countryside”. The new Framework goes further by expressly introducing the term “landscape character” into the natural environment policy.  

• Existing landscape features have also received clearer recognition. Trees, hedgerows and other natural features of visual, historic, or nature conservation value are specifically identified, alongside the role of appropriate landscaping when for integrating a development into its surroundings. Landscape character and visual amenity, of course, are not the same thing. Landscape effects concern the landscape as a resource – its character, elements, features, and qualities. Visual effects concern changes in views and people’s visual experience.  

• Interestingly, while the natural environment policy now expressly identifies landscape character, it provides no equivalent overarching reference to visual amenity as a separate consideration. This reinforces the importance of being precise when considering landscape and visual effects. A development can give rise to visual effects without necessarily resulting in an equivalent effect upon landscape character – and vice versa. For those of us working in landscape planning and LVIA, this is a subtle but potentially important change.  

• The new NPPF now expressly introduces “landscape character” into the wording of the natural environment policy – giving the concept clearer and more explicit recognition within national planning policy.  

 

Protected landscapes  

The Framework includes specific policy for National Parks, National Landscapes and the Broads, recognising the importance of conserving and enhancing their natural beauty. It also expressly addresses development within their setting, requiring proposals to be sensitively located and designed to avoid or minimise adverse impacts.  

Policy N4 provides a clear 4-point structure…  

• Development should be limited in scale and extent, sensitively located and designed to avoid harm to the statutory purposes and special qualities of the Protected Landscape. Substantial weight should be given to conserving and enhancing natural beauty.  
• Major development should be refused, unless exceptional circumstances apply and it can be demonstrated to be in the public interest. The assessment should consider:  
  • the need for the development, including any national considerations, and its impact on the local economy
  • the cost of, and scope for, meeting that need in some other way or outside the designated area 
  • any detrimental effects on the environment, landscape and recreational opportunities, and the extent to which those effects could be moderated. 
• Where major development is exceptionally approved. Mitigation should address potential adverse impacts on the statutory purposes and special qualities of the Protected Landscape, including tranquillity and dark skies.  
• Development within the setting of Protected Landscapes: Development should be sensitively located and designed to avoid or minimise adverse impacts on the Protected Landscape.  

What’s important here is the way Policy N4 weaves landscape considerations through the whole decision-making process: scale and location, statutory purposes and special qualities, alternatives, environmental and recreational effects, mitigation, and importantly, the setting of the designated landscape.  

The explicit references to tranquility and dark skies are also significant. These qualities can be difficult to capture through conventional landscape and visual assessment alone, but they can be fundamental to what makes a protected landscape special.  

Furthermore, development does not have to sit inside the boundary of a Protected Landscape to affect it. Understanding landscape setting, and how development beyond the boundary may influence the experience and special qualities, remains an important part of good landscape planning in NLs too.  

 

Trees, woodland and climate change  

Within Policy N3, Trees in New Development sets out the approach to trees within new development through tree limbs. In summary, the policy places emphasis on the retention and integration of existing trees within development, the incorporation of new tree planting as part of the design of schemes, and appropriate provision for their long-term management. 

• Trees should be considered an integral part of the design process from the outset. Understanding the existing tree resource, and how it can help shape the structure and character of a development, should be addressed early in the process, not after a layout has already been largely established. 

• The Annex B – Glossary contains additional important details. The NPPF provides a definition of an “ancient or veteran tree,” recognising that such a tree may – because of its age, size and condition – be of exceptional biodiversity, cultural or heritage value. Importantly, it confirms that all ancient trees are veteran trees, but not all veteran trees are ancient.  

• It also defines ancient woodland as an area that has been wooded continuously since at least 1600 AD. Interestingly, that definition is quite broad and expressly includes ancient semi-natural woodland, plantations on ancient woodland sites, ancient wood pasture and parkland, and infilled ancient wood pasture and parkland. 

From a landscape planning perspective, these definitions matter. The terminology around ancient woodland, ancient trees and veteran trees is sometimes used rather loosely. The NPPF gives us a clear basis for understanding what these terms actually mean and, importantly, how they should be considered when assessing and designing new development.
 

 

Green Belt and Grey Belt  

The Framework continues the role of Grey Belt, alongside a more structured approach to Green Belt assessment. From a landscape perspective, it remains important to distinguish between the purposes of Green Belt policy and considerations of landscape character and visual amenity. The two can interact, but they are not the same thing.  

• Chapter 13 in the NPPF deals with Protecting Green Belt land, with Policy GB2 – Assessing existing Green Belt land as an important starting point.  
• GB2 requires spatial development strategies to be informed by an assessment of the strategic role of Green Belt land, taking its purposes into account.  
• For local plans, paragraph 3 requires an assessment undertaken in accordance with Annex E, which identifies areas of Grey Belt.  

Annex E requires Green Belt assessments to:  

• identify the location and appropriate scale of areas to be assessed;  

• consider their contribution to Green Belt purposes;  

• consider whether release or development would undermine the purposes of the remaining Green Belt across the plan area;  

• facilitate identification of Grey Belt, subdividing areas where necessary  

• ensure assessment areas are small enough to enable variations in their contributions to be assessed  

The definition of Grey Belt in broad terms comprises previously developed land and/or other Green Belt land which does not strongly contribute to purposes A, B or D in policy GB2.  

The 2024 NPPF Grey Belt definition contained an additional qualification relating to areas and assets identified in Footnote 7. That qualification has now fallen away from the Grey Belt definition in the 2026 NPPF. That is significant. Identification of land as Grey Belt is therefore no longer subject to that additional Footnote 7 test. This does not mean those areas and assets have lost their policy protection; those protections remain through relevant policies elsewhere in the NPPF.  

Annex E then sets out – for purposes A, B and D – illustrative features for assessing whether land makes a strong, moderate, weak or no contribution to each purpose. Practitioners will find many aspects familiar. What matters is that a structured, evidence-led methodology now sits expressly within the NPPF itself, whereas previously it was in the NPPG.  

Grey Belt isn’t simply a label though. It requires reasoned, rigorous, and robust assessment of how land performs against three specified Green Belt purposes, but the former Footnote 7 qualification has now been removed from the definition.  

As ever, the robustness of this Grey Belt evidence – and the professional judgement applied to it – will matter.  

 

Green infrastructure and nature-based solutions  

Green infrastructure features in the new NPPF, as it did previously. However, there is now a strong emphasis on its provision and multifunctional role. The starting point is the Glossary definition: 

“Green infrastructure: A network of multi-functional green and blue spaces and other natural features, urban and rural, which is capable of delivering a wide range of environmental, economic, health and wellbeing benefits for nature, climate, local and wider communities and prosperity. It includes parks and gardens, green spaces, green corridors such as rivers and canals, sustainable drainage systems, features for species, street trees and community orchards.”  

And the breadth is reflected throughout the policies:    

• Policy PM13 – Setting standards identifies green infrastructure among the standards where plans should reflect local characteristics.  

• In Chapter 5 – Meeting the challenge of climate change, CC1 requires plans to identify opportunities for green infrastructure and nature-based solutions to safeguard and improve carbon storage and support nature recovery and resilience, taking account of Local Nature Recovery Strategies. Green infrastructure and suitable tree planting also feature as measures to minimise overheating risk.  

• In Chapter 14 – Achieving well-designed places, Policy DP3 says development should incorporate and connect a network of high-quality, accessible, multifunctional green infrastructure. Its purposes include recreation and healthy living, strengthening habitats, climate resilience, improving air and water quality, maintaining tree cover, and incorporating sustainable drainage. The emphasis on multifunctionality is significant: green infrastructure is expected to perform environmental, climatic, ecological, recreational, and health functions.  

• Chapter 19 – Conserving and enhancing the natural environment reinforces the approach.  

• N1 requires development plans to set standards for green infrastructure provision, drawing on Natural England’s Green Infrastructure Standards for England.  

• N2 promotes green infrastructure and nature-based solutions to secure multiple benefits, including biodiversity, surface-water and pollution management, climate-change mitigation and adaptation, and recreation.  

Green infrastructure is hardly new to national planning policy, but its role in the new NPPF is both prominent and substantially integrated. It runs through placemaking, climate change, design, health and wellbeing, biodiversity, drainage, and nature recovery.  

In that sense, green infrastructure is a golden thread (or perhaps green thread is more appropriate here?). 

 

Conclusion  

The revised NPPF reinforces the value of understanding the landscape context from day one. Designing schemes with landscape impacts in mind will not only align better with national policy but also create better and more resilient places for the future.  

There will undoubtedly be much discussion as we work through the detail and see how the new policy updates are applied in practice.  

 

If you would like to discuss how these changes affect your schemes, please get in touch with Andy Cook, Executive Environment Director at Pegasus Group.