Planning Bill
2:00 pm
Bob Neill (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; Bromley and Chislehurst, Conservative)
I want come back to the IPC and the issue raised in paragraph 15 of your written submission. Perhaps you could flesh it out for me. As everyone seems to accept, there is merit in the single consent regime, in more work being done at the pre-application stage and in trying to limit the issues that arise when a decision-making process has to be gone through. We have had other witnesses say, “Well, the more we talk to the IPC and the more information that we are able to exchange between our experts, that will simplify things.” I wonder whether you have concerns—perhaps you will amplify them—about the real difficulty of having one party talking to the person who is, in effect, the judge and jury behind the back of any other party?