policy-compliance-assessment-nppf-2024-12listed

# Policy compliance assessment Work out **which planning policies govern an application, and whether it accords with each one**. The skill does three things: 1. **Identify the adopted development plan** for the relevant local planning authority, and verify it — the essential first step, because determination starts there and nothing downstream is safe if this is wrong. 2. **Assess** the proposal against each relevant policy, on the evidence in the application documents and the policy's own words. 3. **Score and report** — a policy-by-policy table with an accordance score from **-2 to +2**, then a reasoned conclusion on accordance with the development plan **read as a whole**. National policy (NPPF/PPG) and any **emerging** plan are assessed too, but as material considerations carrying **less weight than the adopted plan** — never as a substitute for it. ## When to use The user asks: "does this comply with the local plan?", "which policies does this application breach?", "assess this against the adopted policies", "what does the local plan say about this site?", "is this development plan compliant?" — or a representation needs a policy foundation before it is drafted. Use it **after** `application-triage` has identified which considerations are engaged (or alongside it — triage's decision-framework step hands off to this skill), and **before** `policy-representation` drafts anything. Not this skill: the deep technical evaluation of a topic's evidence base