Written by Raymond Long – Associate Civil Engineer
Draft NPPF (December 2025): What the Proposed Changes Mean for Transport Planning and the Role of the Connectivity Tool
The UK Government has launched a consultation on a revised version of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), published on 16 December 2025. The consultation runs until March 2026 and represents one of the most significant updates to national planning policy in over a decade. (GOV.UK)
While the current adopted NPPF already places strong emphasis on sustainable transport and well-connected development, the draft version introduces a more structured and data-driven approach to assessing accessibility and transport sustainability. A key element of this shift is the integration of the Department for Transport’s Connectivity Tool into planning practice.
This article summarises the key proposed changes and considers how transport professionals and developers can make use of the tool when assessing site suitability and mitigation strategies.
A More Rules-Based and Structured Planning Framework
The draft NPPF proposes a significant restructuring of the framework itself. Rather than incremental updates to existing policies, the new draft moves towards a clearer, more rules-based structure that separates:
- Plan-making policies, and
- National Development Management Policies (NDMPs) are used for determining planning applications.
The intention is to provide greater certainty and consistency in decision-making across England, while supporting the Government’s broader objective of accelerating housing delivery and infrastructure provision.
For transport planners, the changes reinforce the importance of vision-led planning, ensuring that land use and transport planning work together to minimise the need to travel and encourage sustainable modes.
Greater Emphasis on Connectivity in Assessing Sustainable Locations
One of the most notable developments in the draft NPPF is the increasing emphasis on connectivity as a measurable factor when assessing the sustainability of development locations.
Historically, accessibility assessments have relied on a combination of professional judgement, bespoke modelling, and qualitative evidence. The draft NPPF signals a shift toward a more standardised approach through the use of the Department for Transport’s Connectivity Tool.
The tool generates a connectivity score for locations across England and Wales, combining transport and land-use data to measure how easily people can reach key services such as jobs, education, healthcare and retail. (GOV.UK)
This provides a national evidence base to support planning decisions about where development should occur and what infrastructure improvements may be required.
What is the Connectivity Tool?
The Connectivity Tool is a web-based platform developed by the Department for Transport to help professionals understand how well a location is connected to everyday services.
The tool allows users to:
- view connectivity scores for locations across England and Wales
- analyse access to key destinations by different transport modes
- assess how changes in transport infrastructure may affect connectivity
- test potential new public transport routes or services
Connectivity scores are generated using a combination of transport network data and land-use information, providing a consistent national metric for assessing accessibility.
This approach is intended to support better decisions on site allocation, development viability and infrastructure planning.
Practical Applications for Planning and Development
For developers and planning consultants, the Connectivity Tool could become a key part of the evidence base supporting planning applications and site promotion.
For example, the tool can be used to:
- assess the baseline connectivity of potential development sites
- demonstrate how public transport improvements could enhance accessibility
- support site selection during local plan preparation
- test the effectiveness of new transport interventions
Importantly, the professional version of the tool allows users to model changes to transport networks. This means that proposed improvements—such as new bus services, increased service frequencies or new routes—can be tested to demonstrate how they would improve the connectivity score for a site.
This capability could help transport planners demonstrate how mitigation strategies or infrastructure investment would make a development location more sustainable.
Limitations and Future Development
At present, the tool primarily focuses on accessibility through existing transport networks and public transport interventions.
While connectivity scores are influenced by access to walking and cycling networks, the current professional functionality does not allow practitioners to directly model improvements to walking and cycling infrastructure.
The Department for Transport has indicated that further development work is underway to enable these types of interventions to be assessed in future versions of the tool.
As active travel infrastructure increasingly forms a key component of sustainable transport strategies, the ability to model such improvements will be an important future enhancement.
What This Means for Transport Planning
The draft NPPF signals a broader shift towards data-driven planning decisions and standardised accessibility metrics.
For transport and planning professionals, this means:
- becoming familiar with connectivity scoring and how it may influence site assessments
- understanding how transport interventions affect connectivity outcomes
- incorporating the Connectivity Tool into early stage development and masterplanning work
While the tool will not replace detailed transport assessments, it has the potential to become an important strategic planning tool for assessing sustainable locations and demonstrating the benefits of transport investment.
Contact us if you would like to discuss this more on any sites you are considering and how the connectivity tool could be used.