Design and Placemaking Planning Practice Guidance Public Consultation

Overview

Topic of this consultation:

The Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government is seeking views on the usability of our proposed consolidation of the Design and Placemaking Planning Practice Guidance.

Scope of this consultation:

This draft Planning Practice Guidance (PPG) is intended to support the application of policies in the draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) 2025, which is currently being consulted upon. It outlines and illustrates the government’s priorities for well-designed places, and how planning policies and decisions should support this.

Four existing guidance documents (National Design Guide, Design Process and Tools Planning Practice Guidance and the National Model Design Code Parts 1 and 2) have been consolidated into a single streamlined resource, now called the draft Design and Placemaking PPG. The aim is to make design guidance clearer, more accessible, and easier to apply in practice.

Relationship to the NPPF consultation

These consultation questions relate specifically to the draft Design and Placemaking PPG. All comments on the design policies within Chapter 14 of the draft NPPF, particularly the key principles for well-designed places and the design process, should be made to the NPPF consultation here.

Duration:

This consultation will last for 7 weeks from 21st January 2026 to 11:45pm on 10th March 2026. 

Your responses may be processed by artificial Intelligence to analyse the responses to the consultation more efficiently. These tools assist in identifying and mapping themes in consultation responses, but do not make decisions and all outputs are reviewed by staff for accuracy and reliability.

For any enquiries about the consultation please contact: DesignQuality@communities.gov.uk

Where data is processed by artificial intelligence, MHCLG will take reasonable and proportionate steps to remove personal data from the consultation responses before using an artificial Intelligence tool but this cannot be guaranteed.

Respondents should refrain from sharing personal or special category data outside of the administrative questions at the front of the Citizen Space questionnaire.