Locals to get more say in planning decisions

23 May 2007

The Government has pledged to give economic development a greater weight in planning decisions, and to intervene less in applications for local infrastructure.
Forthcoming planning guidance on economic development will stress that the planning system should support a strong economy, and developments should be looked on favourably, unless the costs outweigh the benefits. The County Surveyors’ Society welcomed the intention, which comes in response to the Barker review’s call for ‘the benefits of development to be fully factored into decision-making’.
Miles Butler, CSS strategic planning committee chair, said: ‘It’ll be important to have this guidance in place, so planners will know what weight to give to economic considerations.’ This should apply as much to local infrastructure such as bypasses as to commercial development, he said.
The planning White Paper also reveals that the Government will ‘devolve planning decisions on small infrastructure projects’, an aim warmly welcomed by local government. The objective is to introduce ‘a package of measures designed to reduce the number of applications determined by ministers’, given the amount of ‘wasted time and money’ that a requirement for councils to refer more than 1,000 planning applications for possible call-in.
The Local Government Association backed ending the ‘needless involvement by ministers and government inspectors in decisions which can and should be made locally’. Butler said: ‘The strong environmental lobby often successfully pushes for national decisions on what are purely local issues.’ He stressed that ‘millions of pounds’ was often added to projects ministers called-in for public inquiry, given the amount of time this typically added to the delivery of schemes. Local authorities were, however, pushing for a strong local say on projects deemed to be of national significance.
The CSS argued that ‘democratic accountability was a great strength of the British system and needed to be preserved at all costs’. It questioned whether the commission charged with delivering infrastructure in line with ministerial declarations on the capacity needed would have democratic legitimacy. If these ministerial statements were not specific about the locations for developments – unlikely for projects such as waste facilities – arguments over individual projects would continue, it was predicted.
Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors spokesperson, Damian Cleghorn, said: ‘There’ll often be more than one way of meeting an identified capacity need, so these policy statements will not necessarily remove the perceived need for a debate.’

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