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.