Petition to Government to speed up planning applications

[Tizer]

As some of you know, Mrs Tiz and I have a planning application in progress for permission to build a house. We've discovered there are lots of obstructions preventing us from being able to create a modern, energy-efficient house and that the council planning departments are often very slow to process applications. For example, ours should be simple and could have been dealt with in a couple of weeks at the most but we are now in the 14th week with still no sign of a decision. Much of the delay is due to the case officer failing to communicate with the agencies, and also because she has taken holiday and been absent at critical points without giving giving us any warning.

I have written about this in a house-building magazine and find that many other people are having similar problems, especially self-builders like ourselves. Particularly galling is the fact that planners have a statutory time limit on deciding applications but they are blatantly ignoring it. Another contributor to the magazine has just launched an`epetition' to bring this problem to the notice of the appropriate Government department. The petition is as follows:
Refund planning application fees when decision not made within statutory time limit.
Responsible department: Department for Communities and Local Government
"We the undersigned propose an amendment to the planning legislation which will require the local planning authority to refund the planning application fee for any application which has not been decided within the statutory time limit. This proposal is submitted as a means to encourage timely decision making by local authorities and to ensure that individuals are not persecuted for complaining when applications overrun."

The petition can be found on this page:
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/34288
Please sign the petition if you agree with its aims. It has only just been launched and therefore has few `signatures' so far.
Thank you,
Tizer

[Stanley]

Done. Sensible suggestion.

[Tizer]

Thanks. Coincidentally, I found out last night that our application has been set back yet another week - it turns out the `council Ecologist' only works one day a week (Tuesdays) for the council and the Director of Planning gave him a job this last Tuesday which took up all his time. The ecologist has said he'll look at our latest bat report `out of hours' but he won't write the report except next Tuesday in council time. The case officer repeatedly fails to communicate with him on Tuesdays which throws us back a week each time. So now we go into the 15th week. You couldn't make it up if you tried!

[Tardis]

Have planning times changed with the introduction of the Localities Bill, do you have a Neighbourhood Development Plan from your town council (you would have voted in a referendum if you have)?

Otherwise there are set time parameters already for dealing with planning applications, and if it goes over this time you can appeal directly to the people above the council for missing their own deadline. These timings should already be on the council's website on full display and the officer in charge should tell you exactly which criteria that the development falls into.

If you feel that there is an issue with the council's performance then the person advising you should already be aware of the routes available to complain

[Tizer]

The district council doesn't have a Neighbourhood Development Plan. It has a core Strategy but is aimed at the main towns and `Key Settlement Areas' - we are in a small village that comes under `other settlements'. Self-builders are reporting slow planning applications countrywide. It's all getting too complicated with too many agencies involved and failing to work together. There are too many `unintended consequences' of recent legislation and problems caused by regulations being interpreted so strictly that even minor building activities are controlled and needing permission. I had to replace the render on my house's gable end a couple of years ago - if I wanted to do it now I would need to make an application to Building Control for permission and would be required to undergo an assessment of my house for energy efficiency and not allowed to proceed until I met BC's requirements. Councils are now even insisting on what security measures a new house should have (e.g. the types of security systems on windows).

As I mentioned in my first post, planners are under a statutory obligation to make a final decision on an application within the time span agreed at the outset. However they routinely ignore this obligation and are never censured for doing so. Applicants are afraid to put pressure on the planners for fear of having their proposal rejected or having expensive and time-consuming conditions imposed. Most feared are the Section 106 and Community Infrastructure Levy which councils are able to impose at will and can amount to many thousands or even tens of thousands of pounds. They were introduced for dealing with the big developers but are being used against individual self-builders who are working to a tight budget, not building mansions but like me just want to build an energy-efficient home for themselves.

[Tardis]

You can appeal the process, and take it straight out of the hands of the local council if their time limit has been exceeded

106 agreements only come into effect if you sign them and then have the money to pay them, hence how Tesco have reneged on both their Accrington and Padiham developments 106's

Your advisor should already have told you this

[Tizer]

106 agreements only come into effect if you sign them and then have the money to pay them, hence how Tesco have reneged on both their Accrington and Padiham developments 106's.

Tesco must be able to afford good lawyers. Individual self-builders across the UK have been hit with Section 106 and CIL and they are forced to pay or their application is rejected. Simple as that. Sign it or be rejected. No matter whether this is what is meant to happen, in practice that is what is happening. The only times when the self-builders have been able to get out of it is by recovering the money in retrospect after having gone through the motions of proving that the Council failed to use the money for what was the claimed intention. The self-build forums and magazines are full of instances of people having to pay these fees. I know the editor of one of the magazines and he has put pressure on Housing Minister Grant Shapps to the extent that Shapps is now promising to consider exempting individual self-builders from CIL - but not from 106 agreements.

[Stanley]

When I signed there were 22 signatures, just had a look and it has only got 29 at the moment. It needs drawing to people's attention......

[Tizer]

Mark Brinkley, the author of the `Housebuilder's Bible' and who writes in magazines, has promised me he'll mention it on Twitter.

[Tardis]

I dare say people now have to sign because of operations like Tesco

If a council does not spend the 106 monies on the agenda items agreed within a specific time period the developer gets the money back