The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) has renewed its call on ministers to rebalance the planning appeals system by restricting the grounds on which developers can appeal and introducing a limited community right of appeal.
CPRE writes:
The Campaign to Protect Rural England is calling on Ministers to keep to their pre-election promises and rebalance the planning appeals system.
Neil Sinden, Director of Policy and Campaigns at CPRE, says: ‘Before the election, both coalition parties promised local communities would have real influence over development in their neighbourhoods. The Government has dropped an important commitment that would have helped make this happen in order to give developers what they want.’
‘Rather then giving communities the same powers as developers in the appeals process as promised [1,2], the Government is only giving them the option to approve development, not question it [3]. This omission means that powerful supermarkets and other developers will be able to continue to bully and bludgeon local communities until they get the planning permissions they want.’
The playwright Alan Bennett put the problem succinctly in a diary entry (16 December 2010) published in the London Review of Books: ‘The planning process is and always has been weighted against objectors who, even if they succeed in postponing a development, have to muster their forces afresh when the developer and the architect come up with a slightly modified scheme. And so on and so on, until the developer wins by a process of attrition.’[4]
CPRE has long called for appeal powers in the planning system to be rebalanced, as a counter to the bullying tactics often used by developers [5, 6]. The grounds on which developers can appeal should be restricted and a limited community right of appeal introduced. The vast majority of planning applications would be unaffected by such measures, but they would provide important safeguards to ensure communities can resist unsustainable development proposals.
Example: Tesco supermarket proposals, Sheringham, Norfolk.?Planning applications by Tesco in Sheringham have attracted widespread local opposition, and were rejected twice (2007 and 2010) by local authority councillors as well as at appeal following a Public Inquiry in 2008, due to contravening both local and national planning policies. In October 2010 a further application was granted planning permission by North Norfolk District Council, by a margin of one vote. A community right of appeal could be a useful check and balance against Councillors losing their resolve in the face of such pressure tactics by supermarkets. This is not an isolated case. In December 2010, BBC Panorama uncovered the 480 supermarket developments approved in England in the previous two years.[7]
Notes to Editors
[1] ‘We will create a third-party right of appeal in cases where planning decisions go against locally agreed plans’ Liberal Democrat Manifesto (2010)
[2] ‘We will make the system symmetrical by allowing appeals against local planning decisions from local residents, as well as from developers’ Conservatives’ (2010) Open Source Planning Green Paper. The coalition agreement published in May last year stated: ‘we will radically reform the planning system to give neighbourhoods far more ability to determine the shape of the places in which their inhabitants live based on the principles set out in the Conservative Party publication Open Source Planning.’
[3] ‘Neighbourhoods will have the power to promote more development than is set out in the strategic policies of the local plan.’ Draft National Planning Policy Framework
[4] This quote was taken from Alan Bennett’s diary in the LRB, 16 December 2010. Alan Bennett has not been asked to endorse this release.
[5] Third Party Rights of Appeal in Planning, September 2001: LINK
[6] Making Localism Work for the Countryside: LINK
[7] BBC Panorama investigation, 22 December 2010: LINK
CPRE News: LINK
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Search Planning Portal: LINK
