New clause 9 - Urgent Crown development
Planning and Compulsory Purchase (Re-committed) Bill
4:30 pm
Mr Keith Hill (Minister of State (Housing and Planning), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Streatham, Labour)
New clauses 9 and 10 contain the urgency procedures for Crown applications. New clause 9 inserts new section 293A, which applies to applications for planning permission. New clause 10, which is almost identical in effect, inserts new section 82B, which applies to applications under the listed buildings Act for works to buildings on Crown land.
I shall talk first about the circumstances in which the urgency procedure might be invoked, and then go through the provisions to describe how they will work. My remarks will be based mainly on new clause 9.
From time to time, the Crown—this will generally be Government Departments—proposes a nationally important development, the building of which is required more quickly than the normal procedures would permit. If the local planning authority is expected to approve the application, the appropriate authority will apply to it in the usual way and hope for a favourable decision within eight weeks. Difficulties arise with further-reaching or more controversial developments that the local planning authority is expected to refuse, which would lead to a public inquiry on appeal.
There are two ways of making significant savings in the time taken to process a planning application that the local planning authority might be expected to refuse. The first is visible in subsection (2) of new section 293A. Allowing the appropriate authority to make such an application directly to the Secretary of State eliminates the eight weeks that local planning authorities are allowed to determine an application, the time that it would take an applicant to appeal against refusal and the time that it would take the Secretary of State to recover the appeal under section 78. Instead, there is, in effect, an instant calling in under section 77.
The second way of saving time is hidden away among the implications of subsection (10) of new section 293A. Section 77(5), which is applied by subsection (10), entitles the parties to be heard at a public inquiry. Under section 77 and, by extension, new section 293A, public inquiries are governed by the Government's inquiry procedure rules, which will be amended in relation to applications made under the provisions to provide a shorter period between the start date, when the Secretary of State has all the information that he needs, and the start of the inquiry.
The period that is usually allowed is 22 weeks. We will consult on what the shorter period should be. Our aim is to have the shortest period consistent with giving the objector sufficient time to consider the appropriate authority's case and to prepare his own case. Our thinking is that 14 weeks, rather than 22 weeks, would be acceptable. The total time saved could therefore be about 18 weeks, 10 of which would be taken up in applying to the Secretary of State instead of waiting for refusal and appeal. Eight weeks would be taken from the lead-in to the inquiry. In other words, we expect the time from formal
application to the Secretary of State to the beginning of the public inquiry to be 14 weeks—three and a half months—instead of 32 weeks, as under the usual arrangements.
The bulk of new sections 293A and 82B deals with the advertisement of the application, the provision of information, making that information available, and consultation. Most of this is self-explanatory, so I shall touch only on a couple of points that need clarification.
As set out in new section 293A(4)(a), the regulations made under section 71A of the principal Act deal with the environmental impact assessment. This means that if the development requires an environmental statement, that statement should be provided to the Secretary of State at the outset. This provision is absent from new section 82B(4) in new clause 10 because environmental statements are not required for listed building consent or conservation area consent.
In new section 293A(9)(b), the Secretary of State must consult certain prescribed persons as well as the local planning authority. Those persons would be statutory consultees, such as the highway authority, for example, if the development affected a highway.
New clause 9(2) is a consequential amendment that adds decisions on section 293A applications to the list of decisions taken by the Secretary of State in section 284(3) that will not be questioned in any legal proceedings, save under section 288. The list already includes decisions on call-ins under section 77 and recovered appeals under section 78.
The system that the new clauses create could deliver a decision on a controversial application in about seven months, rather than 11 months, from the start date to the conclusion of the inquiry. However, members of the Committee may well be wondering what we propose for Crown development that is required more or less immediately. We propose a new permitted development right in the general permitted development order for developments that are so urgent that they cannot wait for planning permission to be granted. That will enable the Crown to undertake what we might call emergency development whenever it is required, but with the proviso that it must be followed by a planning application within a certain time—possibly within six months, but we intend to consult on that.
Finally, the Committee will have noticed that there is no provision for an urgency procedure for hazardous substances consent. That is because we cannot envisage a situation where the Crown would want such consent independently of a planning application for the storage facilities. We have therefore not provided an urgency procedure in relation to the hazardous substances Act. I ought to point out that new clauses 38 and 39 make the same changes to the equivalent Scottish legislation. The amendments take account of the fact that applications under those procedures will be made to the Scottish Ministers; and the Scottish Executive will be considering changes to subordinate legislation along the lines that I have indicated for England and Wales.
I believe that that completes the picture on urgent applications.