INDUSTRY NEWS
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CLARITY REGARDING DEVELOPER CONTRIBUTIONS With regard to the relevant content of the 2011 Act, the industry is not opposed to Developer Contributions in principle. Indeed, when the Department for Infrastructure conducted a consultation exercise on its proposed Development Management Practice Note 21: Section 76 Planning Agreements in late 2016, the industry played an active role in ensuring that developers had an opportunity to positively comment on the proposals and that the Department would, ultimately, publish a Development “While any reformmust not be about eliminating the opportunity for legal challenge there is a clear need to assess the relative ease at which a challenge can be lodged.”
remain. While this can be seen within the respective council planning offices, it’s arguably more noticeable in the time taken by statutory consultees to provide substantive responses to applications. A key focus of the forthcoming review should be on delays in responses and how they can be speeded up yet also be substantive. The review should also consider whether councils should have the power to award a planning permission where statutory consultees have been given ample time to respond but have failed to do so. Linked to this, it may be worth reassessing the Virtual Delivery Unit proposal that was contained within the Housing Supply Forum’s report of January 2016, giving individual planning authorities greater control over requiring responses from statutory consultees within an enforced timeline that related directly to the nature and complexity of each application. EFFECTIVENESS OF STATUTORY PACC AND PAD The statutory requirement for pre- application community consultation on many projects has been a welcome
introduction. Indeed, the changes announced this May (given the ongoing
pandemic), to enable statutory consultation to be conducted by
online and remote means have been welcomed by both developers and local communities. Looking beyond this period, it is important the review considers in detail how all forms of statutory consultation – including the earlier stage pre-applications discussions which have arguably bedded in less well - have worked to date, as well as whether those developers that go ‘above and beyond’ at these stages of the planning process should receive accelerated consideration of their proposals. REVIEWING IMPLEMENTATION OF PLANNING CONDITIONS One of the hallmarks of the last five years has been the significant growth in planning conditions that come with the awarding of planning approval. Many of these conditions, unnecessarily, halt the commencement of development and should de delivered in tandem with projects being delivered.
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