Secretary of State Angela Rayner has announced cuts to the number of official bodies that get a say in planning decisions in a bid to speed up housing delivery.
As part of the plans, ministers are set to consult on removing Sport England, the Theatres Trust and the Garden History Society from the list of ‘statutory consultees’ – official stakeholders legally required to provide advice on planning decisions.
Against this backdrop, the scope of other organisations who get to provide input on applications is set to be narrowed further.
What’s more, reforms set out today (Monday 10th March) outline councils should only be confiding in statutory consultees when it is absolutely necessary, and decisions should not be delayed beyond the standard 21-day deadline.
The news comes after it was revealed within the last three years over 300 applications have been taken to the Secretary of State following disagreement from consultees.
When announcing the plans, Ms Rayner said: ‘We need to reform the system to ensure it is sensible and balanced and does not create unintended delays – putting a hold on people’s lives and harming our efforts to build the homes people desperately need.
‘New developments must still meet out high expectations to create the homes, facilities and infrastructure that communities need.’
Chris May, partner in the planning team at Freeths, told Newstart that whilst the decision to tackle planning delays is welcome, there could be better solutions.
‘Whilst there are certainly many occasions where advice from statutory consultees – or the lack of – has caused significant delays to the determination of applications, in my experience it is usually where the views of that consultee are clearly very important to consideration of the key concerns raised by the application in question,’ Chris said. ‘I think a focus on improving the efficiency and efficacy of the consultees which are clearly important to decision making would be a better way to attempt to tackle delay in the planning system.’
‘That being said, removing unnecessary statutory consultation may lead to some, even if minor, improvement in the system and so it is worthwhile reviewing whether there are consultees on the statutory list who can be removed without any major adverse impact on the legitimate interests which some of these consultees are there to protect,’ he added.
On the subject of protecting interests, Chief Executive of the Theatres Trust, Joshua McTaggart and Chairman Dave Moutrey said: ‘While housebuilding is a necessary part of the country’s growth, we know this Government also understands that communities need to have access to culture, storytelling and educational opportunities.
‘Theatres are a key provider of this and theatres are what we endeavour to protect.’
Photo by Paul Becker via UnSplash
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