Planning guidance update continues

Jun 25 2008 by Graeme King, The Journal

THE Government’s updating of planning guidance continues with the introduction of a revised planning policy statement.

Until recently, Local and Structure Plans set out the land use policies and strategies for local planning authorities. Except in a very few and exceptional cases, local planning authorities used these documents as an important reference when deciding planning applications. In 2004, the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act introduced the concept of the Local Development Framework (LDF) which was intended to replace Local and Structure Plans.

The aim was to create an updated yet flexible set of land use policies, based on consultation, for a local planning authority’s area. The Government’s Planning Policy Statement 12 (PPS12) described the procedures local planning authorities had to follow when they prepared their LDFs.

To explain, an LDF is simply a set of documents that identifies important planning issues and sets out specific sets of policies to guide future development.

These policies can either be general or address a particular area or topic, such as affordable housing or tackling climate change.

It is important for developers and other interested parties to be involved in the preparation of an LDF as it will act as a guide for an area’s long-term planning policy.

As its name would suggest, the key document in every LDF is the core strategy which describes how these aims will be achieved overall.

The Government estimated that within three years of the introduction of the LDF system, around 80% of local planning authorities would have written and adopted their core strategies.

In practice, however, the preparation process has been dogged with difficulties. By the time the three-year limit was reached in September 2007, only around 8% of councils had been able to implement their core strategies.

As a result, many authorities have continued to use their ‘old’ policies as a temporary measure until their core strategies and other LDF documents were ready.

As might be imagined, such a prolonged transition phase has caused uncertainty and difficulties for developers.

The Government now believes that the original process, as set out in PPS12, was too complicated and unnecessarily rigid.

Consequently, on June 4, 2008, a revised policy statement was published, with the intention of simplifying the process and giving local planning authorities more flexibility in preparing their LDFs.

Some of the main points in the revised PPS12 may be summarised as follows:

l There are now fewer steps required in the preparation of the LDF

l The consultation process has been simplified (although the requirement to consult remains just as important)

lThe criteria used to judge a core strategy’s soundness have been made less prescriptive

l There is potential to identify key sites in a core strategy which will help developers assess the planning implications of a particular site.

The revised PPS12 has come too late for those local planning authorities who have already adopted their core strategies.

There is still much work to do, but the new measures should assist in the implementation of the core strategy and other LDF documents. And that can only be good news for anyone who is interested in wanting a say in planning policies for their area.

• Peter McEvoy is a planner at Ward Hadaway law firm in Newcastle