County councils "could lose planning functions", says planning specialist

County councils could be stripped of their only current planning functions – in relation to minerals and waste – under the government’s proposals to boost local economic growth, a leading planning lawyer has said.

Angus Walker, a partner at Bircham Dyson Bell, said the government's White Paper on Local Growth, published yesterday, appeared to suggest that counties’ role in minerals and waste planning could be given to the new Major Infrastructure Planning Unit. The Unit, which will be part of the Planning Inspectorate, is to replace the Infrastructure Planning Commmission.

Walker cited a section of the White Paper which says: "[The fact that some decisions need to be taken at national level] is why, for example, nationally important infrastructure projects (such as large scale wind farms and power plants), the supply of aggregate minerals and planning for waste will become the responsibility of the Planning Inspectorate's recently announced Major Infrastructure Planning Unit."

The Bircham Dyson Bell partner, who said such a move would be surprising, identified a number of other key proposals in the White Paper. These include:

• A tier of development planning below the local development plan, dubbed the neighbourhood plan. “It is not clear yet how a neighbourhood is defined, but it will have some plan-making powers,” Walker said
• Simplification of plan-making by local authorities. “That is something that will be universally welcomed if that's what really happens – the previous changes were supposed to make a more flexible and responsive system,” he added
• The New Homes Bonus to incentivise local authorities to build new homes by matching council tax receipts from them for six years
• Business incentives where councils can keep business rates in some circumstances, instead of them going into a national pool. This might happen, for example, when renewable energy schemes are built in their areas
• A statutory presumption that all planning applications for sustainable development will be granted. “Presumably this will be instead of the current presumption in favour of applications that accord with the development plan,” Walker suggested.

Walker said the Localism Bill – expected to be published next month – will contain a statutory duty on local authorities and infrastructure providers to co-operate with each other, and the philosophy of pre-application consultation in the Planning Act will be extended to all large-scale developments.

“The Bill will also 'fold' the London Development Agency into the Greater London Authority,” he said.

To read Angus Walker’s planning blog, click here.