Connectivity Moves Centre Stage: Basemap’s View on the New NPPF
The publication of the August 2026 National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) represents an important change in the relationship between transport and land-use planning.
While accessibility and sustainable transport have long been part of the planning process, the latest Framework goes further by putting connectivity directly into the assessment and selection of locations for development.
For Basemap, this is a welcome direction of travel.
Where homes are built has a fundamental impact on how people travel, the services they can reach and ultimately how sustainable a development will be.
A national measure of connectivity
One of the most significant changes is the explicit inclusion of the Government's Connectivity Tool within national planning policy.
The Department for Transport's tool combines transport and land-use information to provide a national measure of connectivity, looking at people's ability to reach everyday services and opportunities.
The new NPPF now says the Connectivity Tool should be used when assessing and selecting sites for development under TR1 – Vision-led approach to planning for transport.
It appears again under TR3 – Locating development in sustainable locations, where it should be used to assess the connectivity of locations proposed for development.
Perhaps most importantly, in both cases the wording is not that the Connectivity Tool should be used in isolation. The Framework specifically says it should be used alongside other relevant quantitative or qualitative evidence.
We think that distinction is important.
Connectivity is more than a single score
A national connectivity measure provides a valuable common starting point. It allows different locations to be considered using a consistent methodology and places accessibility firmly within the planning conversation.
But for many planning decisions, the next question will inevitably be:
Why is this location well connected and what could we do to improve it?
That often requires a deeper level of analysis.
For example:
- How many jobs can residents reach within 30, 45 or 60 minutes?
- How does accessibility change between public transport, walking, cycling and the car?
- What happens at different times of the day?
- Does a nearby bus service provide a genuinely useful level of frequency?
- Which schools, healthcare facilities or town centres can actually be reached?
- How would accessibility change if a new bus route, station or walking connection were introduced?
- How does one proposed development site compare with another?
These are the types of questions that detailed accessibility tools such as TRACC can help planners, transport authorities, developers and consultants investigate.
Rather than replacing the national Connectivity Tool, we see this more detailed analysis as a natural extension of it: providing the additional evidence needed to understand local conditions and test different interventions.
A bus stop being close doesn't necessarily make it accessible
There is another part of the new NPPF that particularly caught our attention.
For policies relating to development around well-connected stations, the Framework defines a reasonable walking distance as around 800 metres.
But it also recognises that this should instead be considered as around a 10-minute walk where topography, route availability, route quality or physical barriers would prevent or discourage someone from walking the full 800 metres.
This is an important distinction.
An 800-metre circle drawn around a station does not necessarily represent an 800-metre walk.
Railways, rivers, major roads, gradients and the availability and quality of the pedestrian network can all dramatically change the area that people can realistically reach.
It is a principle we have discussed before in relation to bus stops: proximity and accessibility are not necessarily the same thing.
Network-based analysis allows planners to understand the real journey rather than relying solely on straight-line distance.
Connectivity could directly affect development density
The Framework also creates a much clearer relationship between transport provision and development density.
For residential and mixed-use schemes within reasonable walking distance of a defined well-connected station, the NPPF sets a minimum density of 35 dwellings per hectare.
Where service frequency is at least twice the minimum required for a well-connected station, this increases to at least 45 dwellings per hectare. The Framework also says these minimum densities should be exceeded where possible in areas of high connectivity.
This means understanding connectivity is not simply about preparing the transport evidence for a development.
It can increasingly influence where development is directed and the amount of development considered appropriate in a location.
Moving towards vision-led transport planning
The new NPPF also strengthens the move towards vision-led transport planning.
Rather than simply predicting future traffic demand and then providing additional highway capacity, the Framework defines a vision-led approach around deciding what a successful, sustainable place should look like and identifying the transport solutions required to achieve it.
That requires the ability to test scenarios.
What happens if public transport frequency improves? What if a new walking connection is created? Could a new bus route significantly increase access to employment? Could changes to the transport network make a site more sustainable?
Accessibility modelling provides a way of putting numbers behind those questions.
Our view
At Basemap, we see the increased prominence of connectivity within the NPPF as a positive step.
Creating a common national measure should make it easier to put transport accessibility at the heart of decisions about where development takes place.
But the NPPF itself recognises that the Connectivity Tool should sit alongside other evidence.
That is going to be particularly important where decisions require a more detailed understanding of individual destinations, public transport services, journey times, modes, walking networks or future transport scenarios.
The important question is no longer simply:
“Is there public transport nearby?”
Increasingly it is:
“What can people actually reach, how easily can they reach it, and how could we make that accessibility better?”
That is a much more useful question for creating genuinely connected and sustainable places.
TRACC allows planners and transport professionals to undertake detailed multimodal accessibility analysis, compare development locations and test changes to transport networks. If you would like to explore how TRACC can support your Local Plan, site assessment or development evidence, get in touch with the Basemap team.