Back in 1999 the Local Government Association, the organisation which represents town halls et al, agreed with the Government some "shared objectives for the planning system".
The full unexpurgated text need not worry us here: we are talking about a series of blandishments which smack of "mom and apple pie". You get the drift. The exercise was somewhat grandly titled A Joint Planning Concordat.
Earlier this year the association took this a stage further with a so-called Planning Users Concordat aimed at the business and voluntary sectors.
I have to question the point of these well meaning initiatives. Are they worth the paper they are written on, given the parlous performance of many local authorities in terms of delivering a "quality" planning service? The concordats stress the importance of "up-to-date plans". These are "essential if the planning system is to deliver speedy processing of planning applications, certainty for developers and the security that local environmental quality and social and cultural assets will be protected and enhanced".
So, what stage is plan preparation at? Well, here are some rather unpalatable facts (or at least that's what I think they are). It has been a requirement to get area-wide plans in place for virtually a decade now. If I am not mistaken that requirement was in place in 1992.
Nearly nine years later what do we find? Some 59 authorities (a swingeing 16%) still have no adopted plan in place. Of those, four authorities have not yet even got as far as placing an area-wide plan or UDP on deposit and 16 have not yet started their public inquiry.
The forecast timetable to achieve 100% plan coverage is now, wait for it, 2004. And crucially, 214 of the authorities who do have adopted plans, have plans with an end date of 2001 (or before) and 64% of them have not yet put proposals for alterations or replacement on deposit.
Scary or what? This is nothing short of a national disgrace. You would be right to be gob-smacked by those statistics. All I can say is that they are as Kosher as I could get them.
I am indebted to a speech made a few weeks back by planning minister Nick Raysnford for those grisly details. What have ministers been doing? Raynsford is on the record as saying "this is simply not good enough" which is unlikely to put the fear of anything up recalcitrant local planning authorities.
Interestingly, though, he has been making veiled references to the fact that the Secretary of State has powers in relation to development plan preparation, even if "to use them would be to admit collective failure in relation to a system that must reflect local democratic accountability".
Maybe, maybe not. All I would say is that the following should be candidates for intervention by a higher authority: Rother; East Devon; Bath & North East; Somerset and Warrington. At the end of 2000 none of these area-wide or urban development plans were on deposit.
Planning in the Lords
Just days after you receive this copy of Building Homes, the House of Lords will be considering the Government's challenge to last December's Human Rights Act rulings by the High Court.
Three days have been set aside in the last week of this month for the highest court in the land to cogitate on the issues involved.
So hold on to your seats. By the end of February, or shortly thereafter, ministers should know whether they are going to have to unscramble the planning system.
Little I have seen in the interim seems to give much comfort to the administration. The judgement affects all decisions where the planning inspector is not the final decision-maker. Potentially, all local authority decisions where there is no right of appeal are also implicated.
Another point to ponder, though: the spectre that objectors are also affected. Professor Malcolm Grant is head of the department of land economy at the University of Cambridge. He explains it like this: "The case does not deal with third party rights. The court simply accepted that the decisions and order involved did affect civil rights and obligations.
"However, third parties may also be in this position, though not universally. Often they will be too remote from the case to be "victims" for the purposes of the act. But sometimes they will themselves have property rights that are adversely affected.
"Without any third party right of appeal, there is no way of redressing the lack of impartiality on the part of the local planning authority. So this is also potentially in non-compliance".
Oops!
Source
Building Homes
