The one you've all been waiting for

After two-and-a-half years of controversy and delay, the Planning & Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 was enacted last month. The formal commencement date should be known by the end of June. Much detail remains to be finalised in regulations, circulars, policy statements and good practice guidance but what are the main provisions?

The principal aims of the legislation include:

• simplifying and hastening the making of development plans
  
• strengthening the commitment to sustainable development
  
• making the handling of planning applications quicker and more efficient
  
• making planning obligations fairer and more transparent
  
• introducing more flexibility and fairness into compulsory purchase procedures and compensation arrangements
  
• increasing community involvement in the formulation of both development plans and planning applications.

Changing your plans
It is debatable whether the act will achieve any of these objectives, but let's consider the main changes.

The planning system is currently based on the primacy of the development plan. This obliges local authorities to consider the policies in the approved development plan before looking at other material considerations in determining individual planning applications.

This principle remains, but the act seeks to change the form and content of development plans in order to ensure that they are always up to date and relevant.

Regional planning guidance is to be enhanced to full development plan status and produced as a regional spatial strategy that will inter alia include the distribution of housing across each of the districts/boroughs in the region.

Structure plans currently prepared for council areas and other ad hoc groupings are to be abolished; although in some areas non-statutory sub-regional strategies will partially replace them.

Unitary development plans and local plans are to be replaced by local development documents, which will comprise a series of documents that can be completed and updated either separately or in tandem; including a core strategy, proposals, maps and area action plans.

Local authorities will be required to produce local development documents within three years of the commencement of the act. Existing and emerging structure plans and local plans may be further progressed and/or saved within the same period, after which they will automatically lapse.

The local development documents will be subject to public examination but, unlike the present system where inspectors only make recommendations, the new system gives them the power to make binding decisions.

Outline planning permissions have been retained despite proposals to get rid of them – but authorities can now insist on more detail

All these documents will be the subject of a formal sustainability appraisal, including supplementary planning documents, such as existing supplementary planning guidance, that will not be part of the statutory plan.

On the development control side of the equation, the changes are just as important. The length of full planning permissions is reduced from five years to three.

Outline planning permissions have been retained despite earlier proposals to abolish them. However, planning authorities will be able to insist on masterplans and other more detailed information than is required at present. Furthermore, they are given increased powers to decline to determine applications, in particular twin-tracked identical or similar applications submitted with the intention of appealing one on the grounds of non-determination and negotiating the other.

How much obliged?
The issue of planning obligations remains in flux. The ministerial taskforce on the topic, prompted by Lord Best's rebellion in the House of Lords, continues to meet in private to discuss implementation but the act itself provides for two distinct options.

The first is the negotiated route that is equivalent to the present section 106 route. The second is the "prescribed means" by which a sum of money or benefit in kind is paid, the amount and terms of payment being determined in the local development document. How affordable housing will fit into this framework remains unclear.

Regarding compulsory purchase, the scope for local authorities to exercise these powers have been extended and the procedures and compensation arrangements streamlined.

Finally, local authorities will be required to produce statements of community involvement to support the preparation of their local development documents.

Equally, developers will be required to produce statements of community involvement to support significant planning applications.

The changes may not add up to the revolution first promised but they do have significant implications for practitioners.