Pontoon Boat Plans | Validation nonsense continues

Pontoon Boat Plans

I had hoped (perhaps rather naively) that the legislative changes made by the 2013 Act and by the accompanying amendments to the Development Management Procedure Order would put an end to the nonsense that we had been experiencing in recent years from some (in fact quite a few) local planning authorities over the validation and registration of planning applications, but anecdotal evidence indicates that problems over the registration of planning applications are still widespread, and in some authorities worse than ever. It is an issue to which ministers need to give urgent attention if they are serious about reducing delays in the planning system and general frustration over its bureaucratic complexities.

The root cause of the problem is the target culture, for which both the present government and their predecessors must share the blame. This has bedevilled so many parts of the public sector, inducing a tick-box mentality, and giving public sector bodies (whether it be NHS trusts or local planning authorities) a significant incentive to ‘fudge’ the figures by, in the case of the NHS, not putting patients on a waiting list for weeks or months after they have been referred to a consultant by their GP or, in the case of LPAs, by using any and every excuse to delay or avoid ‘registering’ a planning application. Budget cuts and the resulting paucity of experienced planning staff has only compounded the problem.

It was the introduction of local validation checklists that gave LPAs a heaven-sent opportunity to find all sorts of flimsy excuses for failing or refusing to register a planning application. It is a rare case indeed where more than a handful of the types of information set out in these validation checklists is actually required, but the fact that an item appears on the LPA’s standard checklist can give rise to endless arguments over whether or not a specific item of information is really necessary in a particular case. It is infuriating to be faced with a refusal to register an application in such cases, and even more annoying if it happens more than a fortnight after the application was submitted.

Examples are too numerous to list, but include a demand for photo-montages of the street scene (whether or not the site is in a conservation area), petty arguments over scaling of plans, demands for ecological reports when the development quite clearly raises no ecological issues, and so on and so on. I appreciate that there is now a mechanism for challenging and, if necessary, appealing against unreasonable demands for information, but very few developers would want to waste further time and yet more expense by going down that route.

I am told that some authorities no longer accept cheques in payment of application fees (although I have not encountered this myself), which causes a further headache for developers and their agents.

Clearly the legislative changes made last year have made no difference to the behaviour of many LPAs, and some authorities seem blissfully unaware of them or of the change of culture that they were intended to encourage. Something much more drastic is required in order to put a stop to the continuing nonsense over the validation and registration of planning applications. The whole concept of the ‘validation’ and the ‘registration’ of an application as a distinct administrative process is only a quite recent innovation. Ministers should take urgent steps to do away with this part of the process altogether.

A planning application should be considered valid if an appropriate form (which should not require a signature), and a plan “sufficient to identify the application site” (but not necessarily drawn to any particular scale), plus drawings of the proposed development in the case of an application for full permission, is submitted to the LPA, accompanied by the tender of the appropriate fee, whether by cash, cheque or some form of electronic funds transfer. The form should be considered complete if it identifies the application site by reference to its ordinary postal address or some other description sufficient to enable it to be identified and specifies the development for which planning permission is sought (in words of the applicant’s choosing). Other information may be given on the form (such as proposed drainage arrangements, etc.), but should not be considered mandatory at that stage. Note the absence of any reference here to a Design & Access Statement – they are entirely unnecessary, and should be done away with altogether.

The LPA should be obliged to enter this application forthwith in the planning register, irrespective of whether or not sufficient information to enable the application to be determined has been submitted at this stage, and time for all purposes should be deemed to run from the date of receipt of the application, irrespective of the date on which it is entered in the planning register.

Before planning officers throw up their hands in horror at these suggestions, they should be aware that this was exactly how the system worked before we got bogged down in all the bureaucratic nonsense that has been foisted on developers and their agents in recent years. There was, of course, and should continue to be, a right for an LPA to request further information. An LPA had, and would continue to have, the right to refuse permission on the grounds that insufficient information had been provided to enable planning permission to be granted. Faced with a request for further information which a developer considers unreasonable, there should be an immediate right of appeal (as there used to be). This would take the form of a full appeal under section 78, so that the planning inspector, if there is sufficient information to do so (including any additional information produced in the course of the appeal), may grant planning permission, or may alternatively dismiss the appeal if, in the inspector’s judgement, the information provided by the appellant is insufficient to enable planning permission to be granted.

In the vast majority of cases, common sense would prevail on both sides, and developers would ensure that sufficient information is provided, either when submitting the application or subsequently, to enable the application to be properly considered. At the same time, LPAs would be less likely to make unreasonable demands for information. In contrast to the current situation, demanding extra information would be of no advantage to the LPA in ‘massaging’ its performance figures; in fact delays caused by unreasonable demands for information would have an adverse impact on their statistics.

Many of us who have to work with the planning system on behalf of developers will not take seriously the protestations of ministers that they are ‘reforming’ and streamlining the planning system, until the changes outlined above are made. Nothing less will do.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

Do you find information about Pontoon Boat Plans are you looking for? If not, below may help you find more information about the Pontoon Boat Plans. Thank you for visiting, have a great day.

Read More..

Boat Plans Uk | Extra GPDO changes for telecoms operators

Boat Plans Uk

NOTE: There have been further changes to the law since this blog post was published. The position is now governed by the GPDO 2015.

Those busy bees at De-CLoG are still hard at it. Their latest production is the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (Amendment) (No. 2) (England) Order 2013 (SI 2013/1868) which comes into force on 21 August 2013 (in England only). This is fairly specialist stuff, but taken together with other recent changes to the GPDO, it represents a further liberalisation of the control regime for telecoms code operators.

The amendment permits replacement or alteration of existing freestanding masts except on “Article 1(5) land” or in an SSSI. The altered or replacement mast can be up to 20 metres high and up to one third wider than the existing mast. Larger aerial dishes and extra aerial systems can now be attached to certain buildings and structures.

Several other amendments are made to the requirements for prior approval, and where the code operator and the LPA agree minor amendments to a previously approved proposal under the prior approval procedure, a fresh prior approval application will not now be required.

© MARTIN H GOODALL


Do you find information about Boat Plans Uk are you looking for? If not, below may help you find more information about the Boat Plans Uk. Thank you for visiting, have a great day.

Read More..

Plywood Boat Plans | Common sense about the Green Belt

Plywood Boat Plans

I get the impression that there is a gradual dawning of realisation, not only within certain think tanks but also among ministers and their advisers, that Green Belt policy has been allowed to get out of hand, and that far too much land has been designated as Green Belt, with the result that there is no longer sufficient land readily available near existing towns and cities to meet the urgent requirement for house-building where it is needed. The penalty is a chronic housing shortage and spiralling house prices, particularly in the South-east of England.

The original object of establishing the Green Belt was to discourage uncontrolled urban sprawl into the open countryside around our larger towns and cities and to prevent the coalescence of two or more large neighbouring towns. No-one would disagree with that broad objective; but two undesirable elements have crept into Green Belt policies over the years.

First, the Green Belts have been expanded to a far greater extent than was originally intended and to a far greater extent than is necessary to achieve their objective. For example, the Metropolitan Green Belt around London was intended to be about 12 to 15 miles deep. In some places it is now well over 30 miles deep. I recall, for instance, massive extensions to the Green Belt in Surrey in the 1980s for which there was no need and no objective justification. Our Green Belts now encompass huge areas of land that ought never to have been incorporated in them.

There needs to be a fundamental review of the extent of the Green Belt throughout the country, with a view to reducing substantially the extent of their designated area. This review should proceed on the presumption that extensions of Green Belts that have occurred within the past 35 years should be reversed unless there are very convincing reasons for those extensions, having regard to the primary objective of the Green Belts.

Local political pressures are so strong that it would be impracticable for this to be dealt with at a local level. This is an exercise that will have to be carried out on a national level by central government. Notions of localism are simply going to have to be suspended, if not abandoned altogether as totally unrealistic in face of the dire housing crisis facing the country. Local planning authorities should be required to revise Green Belt boundaries in accordance with the conclusions of this departmental review.

In future, there should be a very strong presumption against further extensions of existing Green Belts. There should, on the other hand, be regular reviews of both the inner and outer boundaries of Green Belts to examine the desirability of removing further land from the Green Belt if changed circumstances require this.

The second undesirable element that has crept into Green Belt policy is an entirely unnecessary and inappropriate rigidity in the treatment of development proposals, which seeks to resist all development in the Green Belt unless either it is deemed to be ‘appropriate’ development or exceptional circumstances can be demonstrated. This rigidity has been further compounded by the unfortunate wording of the relevant policy guidance in the NPPF, compared with the wording of the former PPG2. [See Europa Oil and Gas Limited v. SSCLG [2013] EWHC 2643 (Admin) and Fordent Holdings Ltd v SSCLG [2013] EWHC 2844 (Admin), referred to in this blog on Friday, 1 November 2013 – “Inappropriate Development in the Green Belt”.]

Rather than this increasingly inflexible approach, the advice in the NPPF should be amended to indicate that within Green Belts development should not be permitted which would prejudice the objectives of the Green Belt and/or which would compromise its openness, but that in determining applications for development in the Green Belt local planning authorities should examine the contribution that the application site in question makes to the Green Belt (in other words, its ‘Green Belt value’). It would thus be the impact of the development on the Green Belt as a whole that would be the determining factor, rather than the ‘appropriateness’ of the development in the Green Belt (in land use terms) or any question of exceptional circumstances being required to justify the development. The essential point is that Green Belts are not and never have been intended to create wholly development-free zones in the countryside.

There is one other issue that also needs to be addressed when considering Green Belt boundaries. Over the years a number of anomalies have been created by inept drawing of the Green Belt boundaries. There are quite a few examples, for instance, of the Green Belt boundary cutting across the middle of a residential curtilage. This makes no sense at all, and should be corrected. A related problem is the drawing of a thick line on small-scale maps, with the result that it is impossible to tell with any precision where the Green Belt boundary actually lies. This is an issue that can be addressed by local planning authorities right now, without having to wait for any change of ministerial policy. In their Delivery DPDs (or equivalent DPDs, following adoption of their Core Strategies), local planning authorities should take the opportunity of ironing out anomalies of this sort in the detailed Green Belt boundary at a local level. This is an issue that must be urgently addressed, and not merely in relation to recently fixed Green Belt boundaries, but also in respect of boundaries where these anomalies have existed for a good many years. Local councils really must grasp this nettle, or face the possibility of challenges by way of judicial review if they fail to address the point in their second stage DPDs.

Revision of the NPPF (and/or of the NPPG, as appropriate) should reiterate the principle that the Green Belt boundary should be established on a strong defensible line. This should be a clearly defined and reasonably permanent physical feature in the landscape, such as a river, road or railway. Drawing the boundary across the middle of fields or gardens is totally unsatisfactory, and even field boundaries may not be sufficiently permanent to form a reliable long-term boundary. At the very least, the Green Belt boundary should exclude existing residential development (except in settlements where the Green Belt ‘washes over’ the entire village) and this exclusion must extend to the whole of the residential curtilage. What is required is not a straight line but a clearly defined and readily defensible boundary, even if this may look untidy on a map.

The knee-jerk reaction, both locally from the NIMBYs and nationally from the usual suspects, such as the CPRE, whenever any reform or relaxation of Green Belt policy is suggested must be ignored. These people have become accustomed to regard the planning system as a useful tool for resisting change. But such protests should not deter either this government or its successors after the General Election next year from carrying through this necessary reform of Green Belt policy, so as to enable the essential expansion of housing development around our towns and cities.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

Do you find information about Plywood Boat Plans are you looking for? If not, below may help you find more information about the Plywood Boat Plans. Thank you for visiting, have a great day.

Read More..

Boat Plans Australia | A partial end to validation nonsense

Boat Plans Australia

As other commentators have observed, there have been a lot of changes going on recently, one of which is the revised process for the validation of planning applications, which was brought into force on 25 June (but only in England).

The amendments made by the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) (Amendment) Order 2013 are somewhat more modest than we might have hoped, and they fail to address a number of problems that have been thrown up by the current rules and practices surrounding the validation and registration of planning applications.

There is some limited relaxation of the requirement for Design & Access Statements. They are now required only for ‘major development’ (see below) or, if any part of the development is in a conservation area or a World Heritage Site, where the development consists of the provision of one or more dwellinghouses or the provision of a building or buildings where the floor space created by the development is 100 square metres or more.

‘Major development’, is defined by Article 2 of the 2010 Order, and includes mineral working or waste development, the creation of 10 or more homes, any other residential development on a site having an area of 0.5 hectares or more, the provision of a building or buildings where the floor space to be created by the development is 1,000 square metres or more, and any development on a site having an area of 1 hectare or more.

However, the requirement for a DAS does not apply to an application under section 73 (permission to develop land without compliance with conditions previously attached to a permission), an application to extend the life of a planning permission (under the limited powers currently allowing some permissions to be extended), an application for an engineering or mining operation or waste development, and an application for change of use. I confess to being slightly confused here. A DAS is not required for minerals or waste development, but these are, by definition, ‘major development’, which does require a DAS. Can somebody explain to me in words of one syllable how this apparent ambiguity is resolved? What obvious clue have my little grey cells missed here?

Article 5 of the amendment order introduces a new procedure for resolving validation disputes relating to the information demanded by an LPA before they will register an application. This effectively reverses the Newcastle judgment - [2009] EWHC 3469 (Admin) [see “Validation dispute goes pear-shaped”, published in this blog on 5 May 2010] - and restores the right to appeal under section 78 against the non-determination of the application, but instead of the straightforward appeal that could be lodged before the Newcastle case, the applicant will now have to go through a dispute resolution procedure before the right to appeal can arise, involving yet more time and more cost. But at least there is now a means to resolve the impasse where an LPA is refusing point blank to register an application.

The amendments made by Article 5 do not apply to any planning application made before 25 June 2013, but where an applicant is already at loggerheads with an LPA over validation of an application submitted before that date, it would be a simple matter to withdraw that application (which the LPA has not in any event accepted is a valid application) and resubmit it, whereupon the validation dispute procedure will become available in respect of that new application. The original fee should be refunded automatically in view of the non-registration of the application in respect of which it was paid, and a fresh fee will then be payable on the submission of the new application.

In order to invoke the validation dispute procedure, the applicant may send a notice to the authority specifying which particulars or evidence the applicant considers is unnecessary, setting out the reasons the applicant relies upon in holding that view and requesting the authority to waive the requirement to include those particulars or evidence in the application. The LPA must then notify the applicant either that the authority no longer requires the applicant to provide the particulars or evidence (“a validation notice”), or that the authority continues to require the applicant to provide this information (“a non-validation notice”). In either event the LPA must respond within the statutory determination period ( 8 weeks in most cases, longer for major developments and developments involving an EIA), unless the applicant’s notice was received by the LPA within 7 working days of the end of that period, in which case the LPA has a further 7 working days after that to respond. The application must be a valid application in all other respects, including payment of the fee, etc.

It is upon the service of a non-validation notice or the failure of the LPA to respond within the time limit that the right to appeal against non-determination under section 78 will then arise.

There is one missing element here. A chartered surveyor with whom I have worked on a number of planning cases over the years has pointed out that there is one LPA he knows whose performance is so poor that they are not even managing to register applications within the 8-week period, even where no dispute has arisen over the information supplied in compliance with the local validation checklist. When and how does a right of appeal against non-determination arise in this case? It is possible that the authority in question may get put into ‘special measures’, which I suppose will solve the problem in one sense, as the applicant can then apply for planning permission direct to the Secretary of State, but there could be other examples around the country where this is not going to be an option. My instinct tells me that a section 78 appeal could be run in such circumstances, and that it would not be precluded by the Newcastle decision. However, this is a situation which the DMPO amendment itself does not cover.

Article 7 of the amendment order has now removed the requirement for an LPA, when granting planning permission, to include a summary of their reasons for the grant of permission and of the policies and proposals in the development plan which are relevant to the decision to grant permission. However, this amendment does not remove the ridiculous requirement imposed in 2012 that the LPA must include a statement “explaining how, in dealing with the application, the authority has worked with the applicant in a positive and proactive manner based on seeking solutions to problems arising in relation to dealing with the planning application”.

© MARTIN H GOODALL


Do you find information about Boat Plans Australia are you looking for? If not, below may help you find more information about the Boat Plans Australia. Thank you for visiting, have a great day.

Read More..