Out-Law News 3 min. read

Draft neighbourhood planning law published as Oxfordshire parish plan fails examination


The UK government has published draft legislation that will make changes to the neighbourhood planning regime.

It has also announced that it intends to introduce new regulations on neighbourhood planning  next month following a consultation earlier this year.

The Neighbourhood Planning Bill (42-page / 220 KB PDF), published yesterday, will require planning decision-takers to have regard to neighbourhood plans (NPs) that have passed examination when deciding planning applications.

The draft legislation will make NPs part of the development plan for an area as soon as they have been approved by local people and businesses in a referendum, without having to be brought into legal force officially by the relevant local planning authority (LPA).

LPAs will be able to make minor modifications to NPs, with the agreement of the body that brought the plan forward, without the need for public consultation or further examination.

The bill also includes a clause that will prevent LPAs adding pre-commencement conditions to a planning permission without obtaining the applicant's consent. Such conditions require actions to be taken by the applicant before a prescribed part of the development can go ahead.

Last week, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) issued a report outlining responses it received to the neighbourhood planning questions in its technical consultation on planning, and expressing the government's intentions for each proposal.

The report said the government intended to proceed with its proposed changes with very few changes. It said: "The government intends to develop regulations and guidance as quickly as possible. Our objective is to lay new regulations in Parliament to come into effect – subject to the Parliamentary process – by October 2016".

The proposed changes will include the introduction of time limits for LPAs to take action on NPs.

LPAs will have to meet a 13 week deadline for deciding whether to designate a neighbourhood forum. This will be extended to 20 weeks where more than one LPA is involved.

Where a parish council applies for the whole area of the parish to be designated as a neighbourhood area,  LPAs will have no discretion to amend the boundary or refuse to designate the area. This will also be the case where a LPA has failed to determine an application to designate an area within the relevant 13 week or 20 week period.

LPAs will have five weeks after receiving an examiner's report to decide whether a NP should proceed to referendum. Where LPAs disagree with an examiner's recommendation, only six weeks will be available for further representations and a final decision must follow within five weeks of the representation period.

Once a decision has been made that a local referendum will be held on a NP, LPAs will have 56 working days to set a date for the referendum. This will be extended to 84 working days for business referendums.

NPs for Bolney and Albourne, in Mid Sussex, and Kineton in Warwickshire all received local backing in referendums this month. However, the examiner of the NP for the Oxfordshire village of Wantage recommended that that plan should not proceed to referendum.

Examining inspector John Parmiter said (15-page / 234 KB PDF) the plan, which did not allocate any land for housing development, did not meet the basic conditions prescribed by law. He said many of its policies were not supported by "robust, proportionate evidence" and the plan as a whole failed to promote sustainable development.

Planning expert Helen Stewart of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said: "The publication of the Neighbourhood Planning Bill so swiftly after the parliamentary recess has been broadly welcomed by the industry. In a push for legislation to be in place by October, DCLG has simultaneously issued a technical consultation on the implementation of the bill."

"Much discussion will revolve around the absence of any reference to infrastructure or Green Belt in the bill and what that means," said Stewart. "In terms of neighbourhood planning, whilst the bill seeks to oil the wheels of the machine and thereby strengthen the ability of neighbourhood planning to deliver local aspirations, it is questionable what the bill really proffers in the fight for housing delivery. As the village of Wantage has discovered, ultimately the system will only work if NPs embrace neighbourhood growth."

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