New clause 52 - Planning: Retrospective Applications
Planning and Compulsory Purchase (Re-committed) Bill
11:00 am
Ms Yvette Cooper (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Pontefract and Castleford, Labour)
The new clause would require local planning authorities and the Secretary of State to consider retrospective planning applications as if the development had not been undertaken, and to take no account at all of any of the circumstances arising from the fact that it had, including financial consequences to the developer, the home owner or anyone else.
I have a great deal of sympathy for the sentiment behind the new clause. Clearly, the planning system must be fair. It must not unfairly reward people or developers who play the system—so I have considered the new clause very carefully. I understand the points that hon. Members have made, but I do not believe that it would be advisable to legislate in that way.
The new clause would require local planning authorities and the Secretary of State to ignore material considerations. That would be contrary to section 70 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which requires regard to be had to
''the development plan, so far as material to the application, and to any other material considerations.''
It also would be contrary to the principles of administrative law, which require a decision maker to have regard to all relevant matters. In other words, the new clause would not allow the Secretary of State or local planning authorities to take account in any way of the practical or personal circumstances that might arise.
Hon. Members may argue that the Secretary of State and local planning authorities should not take account of such circumstances. After all, those circumstances would not have existed if there had been a prior planning permission application. There may be many cases in which, for reasons similar to those outlined by hon. Members, I would agree that personal and practical circumstances should not be given particular weight in the decision. Developers might be playing the system, or there might be other circumstances.
It causes considerable difficulty, however, to argue that it should never be possible to take account of personal circumstances connected with the development. The ability to take into account those material circumstances allows decisions to be proportionate. For example, telling someone who has nowhere else to go to knock down their home because it was built half a metre higher than planning permission allowed, when they could have used permitted development rights to do the same work later on anyway, would be considered disproportionate.
I recognise what hon. Members are trying to achieve. All communities would feel that people who undertake unauthorised development should not thereby be placed in a more favourable position than those who seek planning permission in advance. They should be made aware that there are obstacles and dangers involved in developing first and seeking permission later.
I set out the figures in discussions of earlier clauses. The success rate of 85 per cent. for retrospective applications is, as the hon. Member for Cotswold said, slightly lower than the success rate of 88 per cent. for applications submitted before the development has taken place. For major developments, the success rate for retrospective applications drops to 76 per cent. It is also worth taking into account the fact that retrospective planning applications make up just over 3 per cent. of the total number of applications processed.
We must resist the new clause for the reasons that I explained in relation to the material circumstances. However, I would like to consider retrospective planning applications—the 3 per cent.—further as part of our work on the enforcement review. I want to consider the nature of the problem and how big it is. There will be cases in which applications are retrospective because somebody simply did not realise that they needed planning permission, where the development is perfectly sensible, and planning permission would have been given normally—and it is right that it should still be given.
It is also right to encourage retrospective planning applications to be made. Once a retrospective application is made, it allows local authorities to impose conditions on the development and brings it within the planning system. If someone says, ''Well, we're not even going to bother putting in a retrospective planning permission application,'' there are no restrictions, and the only alternative is for local planning authorities to serve enforcement notices and go down the enforcement route in an attempt to argue at appeal that conditions ought to be imposed. That route can be far more time-consuming and costly to the local authority than simply inviting a retrospective application. We do not therefore want to discourage retrospective planning applications—but I do want to go a bit deeper into the nature of retrospective planning permission to assess how great the problem is.