To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government whether the Government plan to abolish the needs test for out-of-town retail development. (189835)

In the Planning White ‘Paper Planning for a Sustainable Future’, we set out our intention to replace the current need and impact tests in Planning Policy Statement 6: ‘Planning for Town Centres’, with a new test which has a strong focus on our town centre first policy, and which promotes competition and improves consumer choice, avoiding the unintended effects of the current need test.

We will carry out a consultation on our proposed revisions to PPS6 shortly.