Streamlining the Planning Application Process
The Government has issued a consultation paper seeking views on proposals to introduce a more proportionate approach to the amount of information that must be submitted with an application for planning permission in England. The consultation period is open until 23 October 2009. The Government anticipates making regulatory changes in this regard to come into force by April 2010.
The change was prompted by a recommendation in the Killian Pretty Review of 2008 that the Government should make the information requirements for all planning applications “clearer, simpler and more proportionate, removing unnecessary requirements, particularly for small scale householder and minor development”. The need to reduce unnecessary administration for both applicants and local planning authorities has become even more crucial during the economic downturn with reductions in the resources available both for submitting and determining planning applications.
Information requirements and validation
A new policy statement is proposed setting out the information which is required when a planning application is submitted in order for the application to be validated by the local planning authority. This will form part of the new development management framework. A draft of the proposed policy statement is set out in Appendix 1 to the consultation paper.
At present, the Government’s guidance on the validation of planning applications contains a “recommended national list of local information requirements”. Local planning authorities are then supposed to choose which items on this list are relevant to their area in order to compile their own list of information that must accompany a planning application, together with any other information required under the Town and Country Planning (General Development Procedure) Order 1995 (“ the GDPO”).
In practice however, it has not proved possible to formulate a national list which identifies all the information relevant to planning applications across all of England. In particular the national list includes specialist items which are not relevant in some parts of England but are in others. It also omits items which are now proving to be important at a local level, for example energy statements.
It has also proved impossible to compile a single list of information that is required for all the different types of development that may be applied for. Some local planning authorities were worried about not requesting enough information and asking for all the items on the national list as well as additional items they felt were required to reflect local circumstances even though the information sought might be irrelevant or disproportionate to their particular application.
The Government is therefore proposing to:
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Remove the recommended national local list from the guidance on validation of planning applications;
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Require local planning authorities to revise their local lists of information requirements by the end of December 2010 as many are currently too long and require submission of documents that are not needed for the determination of the application;
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issue guidance on the key principles of necessity, precision, proportionality, fitness for purpose and assistance in formulating a local list to encourage a consistent approach among different local authorities;
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monitor the production and use of local lists to make sure that they are clear, justified and proportionate and if they do not prove effective then statutory powers may need to be introduced to address this; and
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for large and complex schemes to encourage the submission of documents that are of high quality but concise to reduce the amount of time spent reading the application together with a summary of the whole application which is no more than 20 pages long and identifies the key impacts of the whole proposal.
Design and access statements
The Killian Pretty Review gave particular attention to the design and access statement which currently has to accompany many forms of planning application. At present there is a detailed list of the information that must be contained in a design and access statement in the GDPO and the Listed Buildings Regulations. There is concern that the requirements are too onerous for small scale development and that certain planning authorities are insisting on too much detail in the design and access statement. The Review did recognise that it is important to consider design and access issues from an early stage in a development in order to achieve good design but recognised that many design and access statements are longer than they need to be relative to the complexity of the proposed development.
The Government is therefore proposing to:
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simplify the requirements for all design and access statements to require a straightforward explanation from applicants as to how the context of the development influences its design;
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and reduce the range of applications that require a design and access statement so that it will not be required for certain small scale applications and applications to amend or remove conditions on existing planning permissions.
Amendments are proposed to the GDPO and a draft Statutory Instrument to achieve the proposed changes is attached to the consultation paper at Appendix 2.
Agricultural holdings certificates
The Killian Pretty Review noted that the agricultural holdings certificate was causing delay in validating planning applications. All applicants are legally obliged to certify that any agricultural tenants have been notified of the planning application or alternatively that there are no agricultural holdings tenants on the application site. There is a section on the standard application form (1APP) to deal with this but it appears to be getting overlooked where applicants do not realise that it applies to their scheme and this then causes delay in local planning authorities being able to validate the application. The Killian Pretty Review recommended that the Government should consult on removing the mandatory requirement to sign an agricultural holdings certificate for most applications. The Government has decided however to retain the requirement to sign the agricultural holdings certificate but to amend the standard planning application form to make it clearer that this part of the form must be completed.
Conclusion
The changes proposed in the consultation paper are likely to be welcomed by applicants and local planning authorities alike who can presently find themselves buried in volumes of paperwork that have become totally out of proportion to the development being applied for. The changes will allow a far more common sense approach to be taken to the actual information needed in order to determine a particular application and it is hoped that is exactly the approach that will be applied going forward.
This article was first published in the Property Law Journal on 25 September 2009
