Civic Voice has launched a new initiative aimed at promoting the rights of appeal for communities, developing on thinking around third party rights of appeal (TPRA), and is asking people to lobby their MPs on the campaign.
Civic Voice writes:
For many years there has been considerable discussion on the possibility of a third party community right of appeal – where someone other than the applicant can challenge the grant of planning consent. Civic Voice believes a community right of appeal would improve the quality of local authority decision making as reasons for granting a decision as well as refusing permission would have to be clearly expressed.
Civic Voice has been in discussions with Chris Skidmore MP about a Private Members Bill he is putting to Parliament on April 24th. This Bill hopes to introduce a Community Right of Appeal. To give it any chance of success, we are calling on all civic volunteers to contact their local MP to express support for this Bill. We need 100 MPs to support the Bill to ensure it progresses through Parliament. This is very much a numbers game. The more MPs who support the Bill gives it more weight.
The briefing notes that:
If a Community Right of Appeal was introduced it would enable genuine widely felt objections from a community to be heard as part of the planning process, as indeed stated in the Localism Act. What such an introduction would achieve would be clarity in the process in addition to ensuring that an agreed mechanism with timescales is adhered to. Introduction of a CRA would also support local authorities that fear the costs associated with an appeal from a developer following planning refusal. There have been cases where powerful developers have entered into a ‘war of attrition’ with planning authorities, bringing top bare considerable resources in fighting a refusal, resources that are not at the disposal of local authorities.
Key to the adoption of a CRA is ensuring there is a reasonable and considered ‘participation threshold’. This will help legitimise genuine concerns within communities against a particular development proposal and ensure that such a petition really does reflect a percentage of a community. If such a measure was put in place it may encourage communities to petition as they would have a degree of surety that their petition was taken seriously and at the same time dissuade small minority groups from taking up valuable time and resources of the community volunteers, planning authority, and indeed the developers themselves.
See the briefing at: LINK
Civic Voice Article: LINK
