The National Planning Policy Framework must reflect the scale of the housing crisis, HBF has warned, following the publication of the NPPF practitioners advisory group’s recommendations to government. <br> <br> HBF welcomed the advisory group’s draft document. But executive chairman Stewart Baseley said: “The NPPF will be the most important planning document since the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 and it is vital that the government gets it right.” <br> <br> The Federation emphasised the need for a “truly” pro-growth planning system against a backdrop of dramatically low housebuilding levels and a chronic shortage of first time buyers, as well as long waiting lists for social housing. <br> <br> The definition of sustainable development must also reflect the substantial economic and social benefits that housing brings, HBF added. <br> <br> Meanwhile, the Royal Town and Planning Institute (RTPI) said that it was “seriously concerned” about the way in which the advisory group had expressed the presumption in favour of sustainable development concept in its recommendations. RTPI president Richard Summers commented: “It is a denial of the concept of sustainable development to give overriding emphasis to the approval of development proposals without ensuring that that they are economically, socially …