Finishing 2025 with a policy win

Don’t Waste Buildings finishes 2025 on a high note with the government’s release of the updated UK National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), including several proposed passages to give ‘substantial weight’ to reuse of existing buildings.

You can read more in the Architects’ Journal, and you can read the full government proposals here. The consultation closes on 10th March 2026.

In particular, the section on climate change and embodied carbon now says that development proposals should ‘take advantage of opportunities to re-use existing structures and materials’ adding that ‘substantial weight should be given to the benefits of improving the energy efficiency of existing buildings’.

This is an incredibly strong acknowledgement that our message of reuse and retrofit of existing buildings as a preferred approach over demolition and rebuild is getting through.

Further details are mentioned in the AJ article, and also in this article by Cornerstone Barristers, ‘Unpacking the new NPPF draft’.

Now the policy just needs full adoption, as well as further enhancements to include financial incentives to support reuse and retrofit. We will be publishing a paper in early 2026 highlighting to the UK government our recommendations for financial incentives.