Draft Town and Country Planning (Fees and Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2025 Draft Community Infrastructure Levy (Amendment etc.) (England) Regulations 2025

Lewis Cocking Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2025 General Committees

[Matthew Pennycook]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. The draft Town and Country Planning (Fees and Consequential Amendments) Regulations were laid before the House on 13 February. The draft Community Infrastructure Levy (Amendment etc.) (England) Regulations 2025 were laid before the House on 25 February. Let me set out in turn the reasons why we are bringing each set of regulations forward, and what they will provide for, starting with the draft Town and Country Planning (Fees and Consequential Amendments) Regulations.

Planning is principally a local activity, but a well-established principle is that, in limited circumstances and where issues of more than local importance are involved, it is appropriate for the Secretary of State to make planning decisions. Recent experience, including the response to covid-19, has exposed that the existing route for securing planning permission on Crown land, namely the urgent Crown development route under section 293A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which was introduced in 2006, is not fit for purpose. Indeed, it is telling that it has never once been used. Furthermore, Departments have struggled to secure local planning permission for nationally important public service infrastructure such as prisons.

The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, passed by the previous Government in the last Parliament, made provision to address those challenges by providing two new routes for planning permission for Crown development in England. The first route, referred to as Crown development, is for planning applications for Crown developments that are considered of national importance. Such applications are to be submitted to the Planning Inspectorate directly, instead of to local planning authorities. An inspector will consider and determine the application, unless the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government recovers the application to determine herself.

The second route is an updated urgent Crown development route, which will enable applications for nationally important developments that are needed urgently to be determined rapidly under a simplified procedure. Applications under the urgent route will be submitted to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. Those new routes can be used for developments only where clearly justified. Provisions in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act require that applications can be accepted by the Secretary of State only if she deems that the proposed development is of national importance and, in the case of the urgent Crown development route, urgent.

[Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)]

I draw the Committee’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests that I am a local councillor. Given what the Minister has outlined, will he give us a flavour of how local people can make representations, even if it is straight to the Secretary of State or the Planning Inspectorate? I am concerned that removing applications from local councils and putting them through the new routes he has described will make it harder for local residents to feel that their voice has been heard, even on important national infrastructure projects.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Let me deal with community engagement under both routes. With the Crown development route, community engagement will be a key part of the process. Communities will be fully engaged throughout. Much like an application submitted to a local planning authority, there will be mandatory consultation and publicity about the consultation for a minimum period of 21 days. That period will be 30 days if the development is one that requires an environmental impact assessment and is therefore an EIA development. That will enable members of the community to view and comment on the application.

We expect that the majority of Crown development applications will be subject to a public hearing. Those who made comments will be notified when that is to take place. Interested parties may attend the hearing if the inspector allows it. Only comments made during the consultation, the publicity period and the hearing that raise material planning matters will be taken into account as part of the decision-making process.

The local planning authority will be consulted and will have a role to play in publicising the application. It will need to place the application and associated documents on its planning register. Where PINS—the Planning Inspectorate—does not have a local presence, the local planning authority will be required to affix site notices during the mandatory period and to notify those owners or occupiers who adjoin the site. For urgent Crown development, the other route that the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act provides for, the local planning authority will again be consulted as part of the application. That is mandated by section 293C(2)(a) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. In the draft regulations, we have made provision about the consultation procedure.

While we appreciate the importance of community engagement, given the urgency with which decisions must be made, under the approach to consultation with the community in this process they will be assessed on a case-by-case basis. In circumstances in which decisions need to be made very quickly, it may not be possible to conduct a meaningful public consultation and reach an urgent decision. I hope that satisfies the hon. Member for Broxbourne on the different types of community engagement under both routes.

The new routes, as I said, can be used only for developments for which it is clearly justified, and provisions in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act require that applications can be accepted by the Secretary of State only if she deems that they are of national importance and, in the case of the urgent Crown development route, urgent. I made a written ministerial statement on 13 February that set out the principles under which national importance and urgency will be determined. When submitting an application, applicants are required to set out the reasons why they consider that the development is of national importance and, in the case of urgent Crown development, needed as a matter of urgency.

The draft Town and Country Planning (Fees and Consequential Amendments) Regulations make amendments to primary legislation to reflect the two new Crown development routes. For instance, they amend references to planning permission set out in a range of pieces of legislation. They also remove references to the previous urgent Crown development route in section 293A of the Town and Country Planning Act, which now applies only in Wales. The instrument also sets the fee for an application for planning permission under both routes, set at the same fee, which would have been paid to the local authority.

Following the statutory instrument coming into force, a further suite of statutory instruments will be made through the negative parliamentary procedure. They will set the procedures for the two routes and make further consequential changes to secondary legislation to reflect their implementation. We have published the instruments in draft ahead of the debate, in order to provide proper transparency about how the routes will operate. I reiterate that the Government are committed to ensuring proper transparency to Parliament at every stage when the routes are used. When the matter was considered in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill Committee, I stressed that point to the then Minister.

The following are the ways in which we want to ensure that proper transparency takes place. First, where an application under any of the routes is accepted, the relevant Members of Parliament will be sent a letter. That letter will include details of where the application can be viewed and the next steps. The letter will also be deposited in the Libraries of both Houses. Secondly, when a decision is made on whether to grant planning permission, the relevant Members of Parliament will be sent another letter. That letter will also be deposited in the Libraries of both Houses. Finally, on an annual basis, the Secretary of State will publish a report of all decisions taken under the routes. Taken together, those steps will ensure that Members in the other House are properly appraised of any applications that relate to their constituencies. It also means that both Houses of Parliament will be provided the opportunity to consider and scrutinise the general operation of the routes.

The second set of regulations we are debating make changes to the Community Infrastructure Levy Regulations 2010. The changes will ensure that when development comes forward after it is granted planning permission through the Crown development route, such development can be liable to pay the community infrastructure levy if the local authority charges CIL in that area. In addition, under section 62A of the Town and Country Planning Act, applicants can apply to the Planning Inspectorate, acting on behalf of the Secretary of State, for a planning permission decision when an authority has been designated for poor performance. We are amending the CIL regulations to ensure that the levy can be charged on development that comes forward under this route if the local authority charges CIL in its area. That ensures that fair financial contributions to local infrastructure are made by such development.

Finally, some incidental and consequential amendments are made to the Town and Country Planning (Section 62A Applications) (Procedure and Consequential Amendments) Order 2013 to enable relevant information to be provided in relation to CIL where an application is made under section 62A.

To summarise, the regulations are important in ensuring a more timely and proportionate process for dealing with planning applications for Crown development in England. The Government are taking steps to ensure that the routes are used appropriately, and that there is full scrutiny of the use of the powers. The changes we are making to the CIL regime are also important to ensure that CIL can be charged on development in a consistent and fair way, even when the local planning authority is not the decision maker.