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Here is your opportunity to have your say and debate any current development control issue raised by items posted in DCP News , or from any other media source, including DCP itself. It is intended to be a lively forum and criticism and pithy comment is positively encouraged. DCP News may also be used for submissions contributing to an understanding of control related practice matters. Included under this heading could be case precedents encountered by readers or experiences arising from good (or bad) practice. Discussion is not intended to be a medium where detailed advice is sought on particular case related matters being dealt with by readers. Those with queries of this type should submit them to the Forum feature in Development Control Casebook published every week in Planning. Once an entry has been accepted it will appear in the "Recent Discussion Topics" section. As soon as someone replies the response will be posted and a "View Responses" button will appear next to the entry. After a period of time the item will be moved to the Existing Threads section, where further contributions to the topic may be posted.
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Click here to submit a new discussion point |
Access previous discussion points that have been posted and responded to |
Recent Discussion Topics |
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New householder PD provisions – deficiencies I trust I am not alone in despairing at the government’s recent effort at reforming the Permitted Development Order. Far from making the Order simpler and easier to administrate all that has really happened is that one set of fiddling rules of thumb has been substituted for another. As a development control officer, and after only two weeks of operating the amendments, I am already aware of a raft of ambiguities and interpretation difficulties. It would be interesting to hear from other contributors to this discussion forum as to whether they have come to the same conclusion. Gabriel King posted this on 15/10/2008 |
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Fees - discrepancy using the Planning Portal calculator When submitting an application last week I was very surprised to discover that the fee calculation which is automatically generated when completing the electronic forms is incorrectly based on ‘internal gross floor area’. In reality planning authorities use ‘external gross floor area’. My application would have been £335 short if I applied the Planning Portal figure. If this is multiplied by the number of planning applications submitted across the country I wonder how much cash strapped local authorities have missed out on? Alan Culshaw posted this on 31/8/2008 |
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Planning applications – decline in numbers? We are told that the number of housing starts has fallen dramatically in recent months due to the current financial situation and I suspect the same is true of commercial development. But how long will it be before this decline works its way through to the development control system and applications for new development begin to fall off? I see from reports in DCP News Bulletin that the volume of applications and appeals received experienced a slight rise in the 2007/2008 period but are there any more up-to-date statistics available that throw some light on the current situation? In my own local authority area there has been no apparent fall in planning activity, Peter Monk posted this on 11/9/2008 |
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Affordable shops – the practical problems Boris Johnson seems to be suggesting that local authorities should be seeking to require affordable shops to be provided by developers as a condition of planning permission. I am not saying that this is not a worthy aim, but how on earth will it be possible to ensure that they will be secured? At least with affordable housing there are Registered Social Landlords to which provision can be entrusted. Another practical problem is the setting of a fair trigger threshold. Guy Dyball posted this on 15/9/2008 |
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Heritage Bill –lack of departmental co-ordination? I was taken aback, to put it mildly, to read the report in DCP News Bulletin on 18/8/2008 that the scrutiny committee looking at the draft Heritage Bill ‘saw little evidence that the DCLG had any involvement in the draft bill so far’. What is going on when a major piece of reforming legislation, which clearly straddles the vital concerns of two government departments, is seemingly produced entirely by one of those departments leaving the inevitable holes to be filled in at the last moment. Valerie Holmes posted this on 13/9/2008 |
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New PD householder classes - timetable? The new GDPO regulations for householder development have at last been published but with no accompanying guidance on interpretation in the form of Circular. All we seem to have is a letter sent by CLG to Chief Planning Officers on 10/9/2008 which does little more than explain what changes have taken place since the Government published its response to the 2007 consultation exercise. One aspect of this letter which perplexes me is the statement that the previous proposal to restrict the size of outbuildings has been dropped as “this restriction could have created a liability for compensation being payable by a local authority if they subsequently turned down, or granted subject to condition, an application for something that had previously been permitted development.” Following this reasoning would not refusal of a non-permeable hardstanding have to be compensated where a previous it would be permitted development? Stephen Hale posted this on 14 September 2008 |
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Inaccuracies on the standard planning application form Earlier in the year the standard planning application form won The Government Computing award for “Best Project Delivering Efficiency”. However, I have just carried out a straw poll with my immediate colleagues and they have identified the following deficiencies: * No site address of the development on the front page of P1 In addition my authority used to have approx 10 application forms such as P1's. Householders, Listed Building Consent, Conservation Area Consent, Advertisements, etc. We now have 32 different forms. I have also spoken to agents who have complained about the application form but I do not know exactly what their concerns are. One agent said it was a "nightmare" filling in the forms on line, but I am unsure at to whether this related to the form or the Planning Portal system. I wonder if other authorities or agents are experiencing difficulty with this acclaimed form? This was posted on 19 September 2008 by Jean Williams Senior Planner, Hyndburn BC. |
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Garden grabbing I have been following past attempts get some political leverage out of so-called ‘garden grabbing’, including if I remember, two unsuccessful Private Members Bills on the subject, and have read the Observer article referred to in DCP News Bulletin last month. It’s not often that I applaud this Government’s unusual inclination not to bow to self-interested middle class pressure, but in this case it is right. One would think there was no planning system to protect the amenity of existing residents, and that their very neighbours were not willing sellers when yielding parts of their gardens to developers. Marion Willis posted this on 5/9/2008. |
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