national-planning-policylisted

# National planning policy — the shared layer One place for the two things every companion skill needs from national policy: **which edition is current** (and the discipline of checking before citing), and the **decision-making core** that no topic catalogue owns — the statutory starting point, the presumption, and the tests for conditions and obligations. ## When to use - **From the companion skills** — `application-triage` (Step 2, establishing the decision framework), `policy-compliance-assessment` (the national and emerging tiers of its policy table, and the plan-status and presumption tests), `policy-representation` (verifying every citation before a draft is sent) and the topic representation skills (when mapping deficiencies to national policy): check the edition register here before citing the NPPF/PPG, and take the shared decision-making citations from here rather than restating them per topic. - **Directly** — the user asks "what does the NPPF say about …", "is this paragraph number still right", "does the tilted balance apply here". ## Two layers, no duplication This skill owns the **shared core and the edition register** — the *national* tier. The **local** tier belongs to **policy-compliance-assessment**: identifying and verifying the adopted development plan for the authority, and assessing and scoring a proposal against its policies. Keep the hierarchy the right way up when citing from here — adopted local policies are the council's own and hav