There are concerns that Government plans to reduce the number and scope of statutory consultees in planning applications made to local planning authorities and to reduce the number of planning applications which require responses from statutory advisors such as Historic England and Natural England, could lead to a downgrading of the importance of expert guidance in the planning process, including in areas such as heritage.
In a statement released on 10 March the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, headed by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, stated that it would be, consulting on reducing the number of organisations listed as Statutory Consultees which are required to be approached to comment on planning applications, including asking for comments on the the impact of removing Sport England, the Theatres Trust and The Gardens Trust from the statutory list of over twenty five expert organisations.
The MHCLG also stated it would be reviewing also the scope of all statutory consultees, including the Government’s heritage advisor Historic England, to reduce the type and number of applications on which they must be consulted – stating that instead that local authority planners would make much better use of standing guidance rather than case-by-case responses.
The MHCLG also hopes to clarify that local authorities should only be consulting statutory consultees where “necessary” to do so, and decisions should not be delayed beyond the 21 day statutory deadline unless a decision cannot otherwise be reached or advice may enable an approval rather than a refusal.
The Ministry also wants to introduce a new “performance framework”, in which the Chief Executives of key statutory consultees would be required to report on their performance directly to Treasury and MHCLG Ministers.
Justifying the changes the MHCLG claimed in a statement on the UK Government website that statutory consultees were,
Failing to engage proactively;
-taking too long to provide their advice;
-re-opening issues that have already been dealt with in local plans;
-submitting automatic holding objections which are then withdrawn at a late stage; and
-submitting advice that seeks gold-plated outcomes, going beyond what is necessary to make development acceptable in planning terms.
In one case cited by the Government it is claimed that a housing development was held up over a dispute about the speed of cricket balls coming from an adjacent cricket pitch.
The latest announcement comes ahead of the much anticipated Planning and Infrastructure Bill which is due to be announced later this week [W/C 10 March 2024].
While the Government’s statement maintains that the scope of other statutory consultees will be narrowed to focus on heritage, safety and environmental protection, with the objective of speeding up the building process and preventing delays to homes being built. many environmental groups are concerned that Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, have attempted to build, what has been described as, a crude, populist, narrative around the planning changes which paints genuine environmental concerns, as a block on development rather than an necessary check and balance to prevent disproportionate damage to the environment by developers and to ensure that any damage that is done is understood ahead of any development and mitigated as far as possible under the principle that the polluter, that is the developer, pays for the mitigation.
It is under that process that most UK commercially funded archaeology takes place and there are concerns that by changing the mood music in planning to apparently downgrade the role of expert advice, in addition to avoidable damage to the historic environment, any reduction in the requirements for archaeological work of the kind which could result from the reduction or removal of certain types of expert advice could impact on the viability of a sector where many commercial archaeological units are already operating on a financial knife edge of low profit margins.
There are also concerns that by allowing planning officers to rely on standard guidance for many planning cases, the system could become prone to errors of the kind which would be picked up by an expert eye.
Likewise, adding discretion to the ability of local planning officers requirement to seek comments form statutory consultees could lead to a diminution of such consultations with planning authorities trying to circumvent potential issues by not hearing about them in the first place.
That risk would remain even if more local authority planning officers are recruited as the Government intends and with mandatory training for local authority politicians involved in planning decisions, critics of the plans say.
Finally, it is feared that adding a performance element to the reporting of statutory consultees to the senior levels of Government such as the Treasury would act as an indirect pressure on such organisations to soften, or even decline to offer, advice critical of a potential development in order to avoid censure by the Government.
The Government’s consultation about reducing consultation in planning is due later in the Spring.
