If you are a football fan of a certain age you might remember this classic Nike advert. This came to my mind when trying to think of a clever, eye-catching way to start a blog about the significance of 2012 to planning in England and collective attitudes towards the countryside and developments past, present and future. The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) was published in March 2012 and consolidated within 50 new pages over 1300 previous pages of policy and guidance. Perhaps most significantly it stated that local planning authorities should plan positively for new development in their area and ‘approve all individual proposals wherever possible’. The NPPF introduced a ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ to be applied where a local plan is ‘absent or unclear’, or ‘where relevant planning policies are out of date’ , which, for applications involving the provision of housing, included an inability to demonstrate a five year supply of deliverable housing si