Out-Law News 1 min. read
22 Sep 2015, 2:35 pm
Planning minister Brandon Lewis announced in July that the government would intervene where councils had not produced a local plan by 2017. In a statement issued last week, Lewis said that an eight-strong panel of experts had been brought together "to help look at ways to streamline the [local plan-making] process".
The panel will be chaired by planning consultant John Rhodes, who helped to draft the National Planning Policy Framework introduced by the former coalition government in 2012 and will include Liz Peace, the former chief executive of property investors' trade organisation the British Property Federation.
Rhodes and Peace will be joined by former senior planning inspector Keith Holland, specialist planning and environment barrister Richard Harwood QC and developer Adrian Penfold of British Land. Councillor Toby Elliott of Swindon Borough Council, Chelmsford City Council's planning policy manager Derek Stebbing and Conservative Party member of parliament John Howell are the final three members of the panel.
Lewis said the group would have "a broad remit", would be able to "call on experts in the field as they see fit" and would report their findings to the government in the new year.
The announcement came in the same week that the Planning Inspectorate (PINS) announced the appointment of 39 new planning inspectors and vacancies for a further 20 inspectors, in order to deal with a "high volume of work".
The coalition government said in 2012 that PINS would be provided with additional staff to cope with increased work on nationally significant infrastructure projects and to deal with community infrastructure levy and the examination of local plans. However, the inspectorate faced criticism from experts over its staffing levels earlier this year after its figures revealed a delay of nearly a year in reaching decisions on certain planning appeals.
Planning expert Jamie Lockerbie of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com said: "This will be welcome news for developers and planning applicants in general. A significant number of local planning authorities still do not have a post-NPPF local plan adopted, and some do not even have a post-Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 plan adopted."
"A real conundrum for central government has been how to make authorities adopt an up-to-date in a timely manner, particularly given the number of authorities who have suffered setbacks to their plan making process owing to failures to comply with the duty to co-operate and to properly plan for their objectively assessed housing need," said Lockerbie. "Thus far the only real incentive to get on with adopting an up-to-date local plan has been to avoid developers capitalising on the policy vacuum in planning appeals. It will be interesting to see what solutions the panel come up with in due course."
