Updated 22 October 2004

Planning Policy Guidance notes form a systematic body of general policy guidance issued by the ODPM (and its predecessors) on all national planning topics. They lay down the national policies on which complementary geographically specific guidance - currently Regional Planning Guidance, County Structure Plans and Local Plans - must be based. And while individual planning decisions, taken by Planning Authorities or (on the advice of an Inspector) by the Secretary of State, will normally be grounded in such local guidance, the PPGs are always present to help resolve ambiguities, contradictions or matters on which local guidance is silent.

Although most of the PPGs may be purchased in printed form, they are (with the minor exception of a few rarely-needed Annexes) all available to be downloaded free from the ODPM website. Most are in Portable Document Format (.pdf) form and may be read or printed using Acrobat Reader, a first-class program that may be downloaded free.

The ODPM website has recently been reorganised and there is now a web page which contains links to lists of all the PPGs, all the new-style Planning Policy Statements (PPSs) and a number of Planning Circulars.  The table containing a list of PPGs that used to be on this page, below, has therefore been removed.

Other Guidance

Some additional ODPM guidance is in the form of circulars, which are listed on their web site. Some information is only given in Parliamentary Replies. Although the Parliamentary database is well indexed and several years of information is available on line, you need to know the approximate date and if possible other relevant details in order to find what you want. For example the Government's call-in policy can be found by searching the database for June 1999 for "call-in". The text is reproduced on this site for convenience.