Martin Goodall’s planning law blog offers further perspectives on the legal issues that might arise from the outsourcing of planning services at Barnet.
Martin Goodall concludes:
‘…My concern… is that a local authority has no right to delegate decision-making in relation to any of its regulatory functions to anyone outside the authority. It is the council that has the statutory duty to make the decision, and so an LPA must be very careful not to go too far in delegating planning casework to an outside contractor, lest they infringe the very well known rule – Delegatus non potest delegare.’
‘…the extent to which the development management process has been delegated to this contractor in Barnet may well come in for scrutiny, and if the extent of that delegation goes too far (as the homelessness investigations did in the Dorset case), we may yet see a successful legal challenge to Barnet’s outsourcing scheme.’
For the Barnet court case see: LINK
For the background see: LINK
Planning Law Blog: LINK
