The Growth & Infrastructure Bill has been published to bring forward the legislative detail of some of the headline measures jointly announced by the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister on 6 September.
The measures are mainly of a technical nature and include:
- Allowing the reconsideration of economically unviable ‘Section 106’ agreements for affordable housing provision.
- Cutting back the volume of paperwork which applicants have to submit with a planning application.
- Restricting town and village green applications being made when a planning application is submitted, has been approved or the land is allocated for development. Also allowing land owners to make regular simplified declarations to the registration authorities that the land is not common land even when it is accessible to the public.
- Making it easier to stop up or divert highways and public footpaths at the same time as planning permission is granted.
- Implementing the recommendations from the ‘Penfold’ review to remove other over-lapping development consent regimes, where multiple permissions from different government agencies are required on top of planning permission; and
- Allowing centralised decisions where a local authority has been designated as having a record of very poor performance. Decisions will be taken in twelve months from the start of examination. Existing requirements to consult local communities are retained.
The Bill can be viewed here
If you would like further details please contact Nick Sutcliffe on 020 7529 1768 or e-mail nick.sutcliffe@ppsgroup.co.uk
Written by Nick Sutcliffe
I will be interested to see how far developers are willing to go to demonstrate the “viability” or otherwise of stalled schemes. I have already worked in LA’s where the issue of viability has been fully addressed and used as a material consideration when setting aside requirements for planning gain contributions and/or affordable housing. While developers have been willing to discuss detailed development appraisals/valuations with the LA’s Estates/Valuation officers and their colleagues in planning, this was almost always on a “confidential” basis. Most where very reluctant to disclose their detailed calculations for full public scrutiny. It will therefore be interesting to see to what extent developers will be now willing to go to disclose such information as the primary basis of their applications.