Further written evidence reported to the House
Planning Bill
10:00 am
Mark Southgate: That is a potential matter to consider. Again, I will say that it relates to the operating procedures of the infrastructure planning commission and that those procedures are seen to be open and people have a right to be involved in them. Equally, it also relates to this important and perhaps forgotten element of the proposals, which is that you can have the national policy statement and the infrastructure planning commission but, in between, you have this quite significant pre-application duty on the developer. Good developers will say that getting the public consultation right is crucial in determining whether they obtain a speedy decision or not. Many developers will say that that up-front investment in talking to the community, allaying some of their fears if not all of them, informing them and making them feel that there has been an open process, can deliver the result at the end in terms of the time saving. Certainly, the better developers do that.