Planning Control
Debate between Robert Neill and Neil Carmichael(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) for securing this important debate. I am concerned about enforcement and appeals, and I am thinking about the transition from the existing planning regime to the new regime once the Localism Bill becomes an Act. Will the Minister comment on a situation where an appeal is made about a recent decision, and how that might be treated under the new planning regime?
Robert Neill
There is a legitimate role for an appeals process in a planning system. Planning decisions are matters of important public consideration, and in many circumstances affect proprietary rights. Our advice is that it is necessary to have an appeals process, and to ensure that the system is compliant with human rights legislation. We must have a planning system, and our desire is to avoid the system we have at the moment, whereby planning by appeal takes place almost automatically because local authorities are almost forced to refuse applications because they are grounded on the basis of the regional spatial strategies, which do not have regard to local needs. I want to get away from that. The scheme in the Localism Bill—it is too detailed for me to go through at this stage—involves front-loading the process to encourage much greater community involvement in the development of neighbourhood plans; and developments over a certain minimum threshold will require pre-application discussions. The best developers do that anyway, and that will provide a greater opportunity for issues to be thrashed out before the decision-making process, rather than being decided on appeal.
The Bill proposes to abolish the pre-determination rule. That rule is a considerable vice because it prevents local councillors from speaking out on behalf of their constituents for fear that they will be prevented from being involved in a decision. There will have to be an appeals process, but I hope that if we can reduce the volume of cases that go through it, and look at how to simplify it and make it more intelligible, that will deal with many of the issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire.