The Planning Officers Society have made formal representation to the government for changes to be included in the forthcoming governmental review of the planning system. They say "Unauthorised development: Review the current four‐year and ten‐year “immunity” rules, preventing enforcement action being taken against unlawful development. As recent well‐publicised cases have shown, these encourage rogue developers, place heavy enforcement burdens on local authorities and undermine public confidence in the effectiveness of the planning system.

Forest of Dean District Council has lost its enforcement action over a building made of straw bales originally constructed for research and educational purposes by local resident Jim Wallis, who subsequently moved in and lived in the property.

The straw bale house had become a planning cause célèbre, the subject of high court challenges and two appeals. As a result of the most recent one Wallis has been allowed to retain the building, threatened with demolition, and to live in it.

Peter Williams, group manager for planning and housing with the local planning authority, said “It’s very disappointing to lose this case. Planning permission was originally granted as an exception to policy for a specific educational purpose and because of its environmental aspects.

“Planning law states that immunity from enforcement action is gained either after 10 years for uses of land or breaches of condition, or four years for building works or changes of use to a single dwelling.

“The council’s argument in this case was that the relevant period was 10 years as there was a breach of a condition on the original planning permission. The inspector accepted the appellant’s argument that the relevant period in this case was four years. The complexity of the arguments is reflected in the fact that the case has been the subject of consideration by two inspectors and the High Court.”

This is a quote from Hansard 26 July 2010

The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles): Today I am underlining our commitment to supporting the creation of new free schools through the planning system.

The new Government are committed to decentralising power, including over planning. Localism should involve both devolving power down to local councils, and going further by devolving power and opportunity down to community groups, neighbourhoods and individual citizens. Our free schools policy is an example of localism and the big society in action-by empowering individuals to come together to improve the educational choices for their children in their local community.

The Secretary of State for Education outlined his proposals for new free schools on 18 June. Teachers, parents and charities will have much greater freedom to set up schools which respond to local needs. We want to encourage competition and innovation, to address the imbalance of opportunity in education and enable schools to develop their own identity. Our approach will increase choice and drive up standards across the country and provide a real opportunity to transform the lives of disadvantaged children.

We know that many individuals and organisations are passionate about improving standards in education, and they will want to take advantage of the new freedoms. But we do not want to squander the opportunities that they represent, for lack of suitable school premises. Neither do we want to strangle proposals with red tape, by putting them through a lengthy and ponderous planning process. So we want to make it easier for promoters of schools to build new premises, or find and if necessary adapt buildings suitable for the needs of a school.

We are already giving a strong message to local planning authorities that they must be more responsive to the needs of their own area. We are empowering them to take more responsibility for planning decision-making, by removing centralised targets and streamlining national planning policy. We are also encouraging them to take a more proactive and positive, collaborative approach to development at the pre-application stage. The best authorities work with applicants to identify the key issues and how they might be resolved, before the planning application is submitted. In this way, they have the opportunity to work with development promoters, to bring about imaginative, but practical solutions, which will benefit their local community. This is what we would like to see happening with new free schools.

The leader of Barnet Council, councillor Lynne Hillan, has welcomed the decision of Communities secretary Eric Pickles not to call in the £4.5bn redevelopment of Brent Cross shopping centre, approved by the council last year, backed by London mayor Boris Johnson but put on hold pending a Government decision on whether or not to hold a public inquiry.

Councillor Hillan said: "I am obviously delighted that Barnet’s biggest regeneration project has been given a green light by central Government. This is a £4.5bn investment in the borough that will create a new town centre, new homes, new jobs and new schools as well as enhancing one of the borough’s biggest employers.”

Education secretary Michael Gove has revealed that the Government is committed to making it easier to secure sites for new schools as part of the coalition’s free schools initiative.

This will include allowing a wider range of sites, including residential and commercial property, to be used as schools without the need for “change of use” consent.

There will also be an extension of powers to protect existing schools’ sites, to make sure they are kept available for use by new schools where there is demand, announced the education secretary.

Circular 05/2010 confirms changes to the Use Classes Order - Essentially the changes are:

Use class C2A is for secure residential institutions, which enables changes between similar types of premises (but with different uses) to be made without requiring planning permission for a change of use.

Class C3: Dwellinghouses, this class is now formed of 3 parts:
• C3(a): those living together as a single household as defined by the Housing Act 2004 (basically a ‘family’)
• C3(b): those living together as a single household and receiving care, and
• C3(c): those living together as a single household who do not fall within the C4 definition of a house in multiple occupation (HMO).

The new C4 class covers small shared dwelling houses occupied by between 3 and 6 unrelated individuals who share basic amenities.
Small bed-sits will be classified as C4.

For full details please contact us This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Communities and Local Government secretary Eric Pickles has told councils and the Planning Inspectorate that the regional planning regime for England should no longer carry any weight in terms of planning decisions.

He has written to every local planning authority (LPA) and the Inspectorate highlighting the coalition Government’s plans to abolish regional spatial strategies and stressing that decisions on housing supply “will rest with LPAs without the framework of regional numbers and plans”.

The secretary of state said councils and the Inspectorate should “have regard to this letter as a material consideration in any decisions they are currently taking”.

In the letter Pickles stressed the administration’s commitment “to rapidly abolish regional strategies and return decision-making powers on housing and planning to local councils”.

“Consequently, decisions on housing supply (including the provision of traveller’s sites) will rest with local planning authorities without the framework of regional numbers and plans,” he said.

He promised a formal announcement “soon”. The letter has had an immediate effect with a number of LPAs announcing that work on core strategies was being reviewed or put on ice.

The secretary of state commented: “We've promised to use legislation to scrap top-down building targets that are eating up the green belt, but I'm not going to make communities wait any longer to start making decisions for themselves.

"I have written to all councils to let them know that they can make planning decisions in the knowledge that 'regional strategies' will soon be history. It will no longer be possible to concrete over large swathes of the country without any regard to what local people want."

Housing developers have expressed concern over these latest developments. The Home Builders Federation, the sector’s trade body, has warned that existing housing shortages will get worse because of policy uncertainties.

HBF executive chairman Stewart Baseley said: "The Government says it is committed to delivering more homes, but without urgent guidance, this aspiration will not be achieved. Scrapping the existing system without a replacement is a recipe for disaster.

“We have an acute housing crisis in this country, approaching a shortfall of a million new homes. We just cannot afford a period of confusion to reduce house building still further at a time when we are already building at the lowest level for many decades.”

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has approved plans for a major regeneration project, which will create a new town centre at Brent Cross in Cricklewood, north London.

The £4.5 billion scheme is a welcome boost to the local economy in Barnet and to London as a whole. It aims to bring a total of 27,000 new jobs to the area, including skills training for local people, all serving to help drive London forward and out of the recession.

The scheme will provide a new gateway to London and a vibrant new urban quarter in Barnet. The plans for a whole new town centre based around Cricklewood and Brent Cross would create more jobs, affordable homes, new schools, new health facilities, high quality parks and open spaces, and major improvements to local transport facilities.

The project will see improvements to highways and road junctions in the area, equipping it to efficiently carry any extra traffic arising from the development. The new public transport measures in the scheme will be managed by a new Transport Strategy Group, with representatives from Transport for London, Barnet Council and the developers.

The Mayor of London’s team has worked closely with the council and developers to secure the maximum number of affordable homes possible. This will be reviewed at each phase to ensure there are opportunities to add more affordable housing in line with changing market conditions.

The Mayor said: “This is another great example of pushing ahead with major development and infrastructure improvements to create jobs, and boost the capital’s economic growth, while transforming the quality of life of thousands of Londoners. The scheme will bring a new vitality to a part of the capital in need of regeneration.

“Having carefully considered the proposal I am satisfied that the application fulfils the need to have the kinds of transport links that will bring fluidity and rejuvenation to Brent Cross while avoiding potential problems caused by any extra traffic.”

The following article appeared on the Planning Portal 25 February 2009

Wide-ranging reforms of the planning system proposed by the Conservative Party in a planning Green Paper have received a mixed response.
The party has proposed third-party appeals, a presumption in favour of “sustainable development”, a “National Planning Framework”, changes to the Use Classes Order (UCO) regime, a reduced role for the Planning Inspectorate, an end to national housing targets and the scrapping of the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL).
The Conservatives claimed, in the document 'Open Source Planning', that the present system was “broken” and set out proposals to abolish the existing regional planning arrangements, remove the power of the Planning Inspectorate to “rewrite local plans” and amend the UCO so that “people can use land and buildings for any purpose allowed in the local plan”.
Under the changed local planning regime proposed by the document, the Inspectorate would report to the Secretary of State on any breaches of national planning guidance.
“Where the SoS finds that a local plan breaches national planning guidance, is not appropriately spatial, or has not been produced within the statutory framework, it will be for the local planning authority to amend and resubmit its local plan,” said the green paper.
Matt Thomson, acting director of policy at the Royal Town Planning Institute, denied the planning system was “broken”. He said: “The system itself is basically sound, but has been over-engineered and centralised. Few of the Conservatives’ stated aims actually need a radical change to the planning system, change which could lead to a period of uncertainty, resulting in serious consequences for the provision of housing, employment and key infrastructure, as well as for overall economic recovery.”
He added: “We will be looking very closely at proposals that we have concerns about, such as abolishing regional planning, enabling so-called third-party rights of appeal and introducing a presumption in favour of sustainable development.”
Fiona Howie, head of planning at the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said: “We welcome the aspiration to get more people involved in shaping the communities that they live in. The current planning system is by no means perfect but there are elements of it that we do not want to see lost in a hasty and sweeping reform. A national target on housing density, for example, will continue to be critical in preventing urban sprawl and protecting our countryside.”

She added: “The planning system has been through two major reforms in the last decade. In refining their proposals the Conservatives should engage further with local people and stakeholders so that any new system does not cause more problems than it resolves.”
Liz Peace, chief executive of the British Property Federation, said: “Targets have failed and it’s clear we need to try out new innovative ways of making things happen, but while there are some excellent ideas here, third-party right of appeals would be a recipe for chaos. It would clog up the system and undermine everything the Tories have said about being pro-development.”
View the Conservative’s ‘Open Source Planning’ document

By Paola Buonadonna
The Politics Show, BBC One

The Tories say they want to help communities set up schools
Local authorities in England could lose many of their planning powers regarding schools if the Conservatives win the general election.
A draft of the party's planning policy, seen by BBC One's The Politics Show, says the schools secretary would take decisions on building new schools.
They would, in effect, be treated like major infrastructure projects. The policy says the party would not want unnecessary bureaucracy to stifle the creation of new community schools.
The Conservative policy on planning, to be published later this month, is based on the idea of localism - bringing an end to national targets and giving freedom for local authorities to decide how much housing or commercial development they want in their area. But schools will be the exception to the rule, according to the latest draft of the document.
The party has pledged to allow parents and non-profit making organisations to set up new, independent schools wherever they want. Unnecessary bureaucracy
The Conservatives' planning system would remove potential obstacles to the development of new schools by curtailing the power of local authorities in this area, according to the document. The leaked planning policy says "for the [education] policy to be successful it is essential that unnecessary bureaucracy is not permitted to stifle the creation of new community schools". Under the policy, as well as planning decisions on new schools being taken by the secretary of state for children, schools and families, anyone would be able to turn an existing building into a school without the need for planning permission. And when an existing school closed, that land would not be allowed to be used for any other purpose without the agreement of the schools secretary.
Shadow planning minister Bob Neill told The Politics Show said the party had made it clear it wanted to help parents and communities establish new schools. He said: "That's our national policy and naturally therefore we, within the planning side of things, want to facilitate that approach. "And then the best thing is to look sensibly at what the details are to be able to help communities and parents who want to do that, to achieve that."
The Politics Show will be broadcast on BBC One at 1200 GMT on 7 February.