The Town Planning team at NHS Property Services (NHSPS) has produced a guide to help drive usage of PiP across the NHS estate, available for its customers and wider NHS partners.
Permission in Principle (PiP), introduced in 2017, is a planning mechanism used to obtain planning permission for residential or residential-led developments. It offers a faster and cheaper route to obtaining planning permission for the principle of residential-led development. In spite of this, PiP has so far seen minimal uptake in the planning world.
PiP provides an opportunity for the NHS to establish whether a site is suitable for housing, not dissimilar to pre-application advice but with a binding outcome. NHSPS believes this is particularly helpful for a portfolio as unique as that of the NHS, with potential to enable development that supports maximising the value of surplus sites, delivering housing and potentially ancillary NHS healthcare or office uses.
The guide is one of a host of town planning guidance documents currently being finalised by the NHSPS Town Planning team. It covers:
• An introduction to PiP
• How PiP interacts with the Brownfield Land Register
• How to submit direct applications (on proposals featuring less than 10 units)
• Next steps after PiP consent is granted: Technical Details Consent
• Merits and risks of pursuing PiP, comparing against alternative routes
• How PiP can be used across the NHSPS portfolio
Click here to download the guide. The NHSPS Town Planning team are also available to provide further information or guidance.
