Planning officers submit 12 suggestions for cutting red tape

A significant reduction in the paperwork required to accompany planning applications and an end to “gold-plated” arrangements in relation to sustainability assessment are among the ways that the planning system could benefit from de-regulation under the government’s drive to cut red tape, the Planning Officers Society has said.

In its submission to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the POS suggested that:

• There was scope to reduce the burden of paperwork, without prejudicing the processing of planning applications
• Arrangements for sustainability assessment are “unnecessarily gold-plated, and often tend to generate long, turgid documents that add little to the sum of human wisdom”. These could be simplified, for example merging the separate process of Appropriate Assessment into a single assessment regime
• Aspects of the principle of planning policy being underpinned by solid evidence (such as strategic housing market assessments) have got out of proportion to the added value they bring to policy. The range and detail of evidence requirements “needs to be revisited”
• Not all the detail required in annual monitoring reports is necessary
• Local development schemes “tend to be unnecessarily detailed”
• The £40,000 a year that a typical planning authority spends on public notices in local newspapers serves little purpose, with this expenditure “little more than hidden subsidies to the local newspaper industry”
• There may be scope for simplifying or unifying the multiple regulatory regimes, for example where planning controls operate alongside other regulatory regimes
• The number of references of planning applications to central government could be reduced and simplified, and the requirement to consult national agencies and quangos could be dropped in certain circumstances
• The system could be “de-jargoned”, as this discourages public participation
• The prior notification procedure – “a prime candidate for deregulation” – could be deleted as it would make the permitted development system simpler and easier for the public to understand
• Consideration should be given to finding a way of the local authority validating its housing supply situation in a way that it does not face repeated challenge, and
• A review should be conducted of the current four-year and ten-year “immunity” rules, preventing enforcement action being taken against unlawful development. “As recent well-publicised cases have shown, these encourage rogue developers, place heavy enforcement burdens on local authorities and undermine public confidence in the effectiveness of the planning system.”

The POS said: “We welcome the initiative to reduce the burden of unnecessary regulation, both as part of our ongoing commitment to providing a more efficient and accessible planning service to our customers, and because it could help us in delivering your localism agenda within the tight financial constraints in which we now find ourselves.”