The Planning Act 2008

The Planning Act 2008 was granted Royal Assent on 26 November 2008. The Act introduces a new stream-lined system for decisions on applications to build nationally significant infrastructure planning in England and Wales, alongside further reforms to the town and country planning system and the introduction of a Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL).

The aim is to improve the current planning process by:

• Improving clarity and responsiveness of national policies by first establishing a set of policies against which all future plans will be assessed. These policies will be established with consultation with community groups. It is not clear how the establishment of these policies will integrate with the existing or future polices of existing departments for power, roads, ports etc.

• Reducing bureaucracy, time to make a decision and unpredicatability of the decision by trying to engender a spirit of co-operation between the developers and the independent commission and also between the developers and local community to ensure issues are dealt with ahead of time and not through the process of long and complicated public enquiries.  Time limits will be set for legal challenges etc.

• Making it easier for individuals and communities to be heard by establishing open forums for people to speak and aire their views. It is not clear what format these will be and how long they would be expected to go on for. It is also not clear whether anyone who wants to will be allowed to speak or whether it will be restricted in some way.

• Simplifying the planning systems to make them transparent and accountable
  making decisions at the 'right' level. It is not clear what this means, although there is an intention to take away planning approval (or otherwise) of major infra-structure projects from local authorities and give it to this independent commission. Likewise, local authorities will be given responsibility for truly local developments. It is not clear how this process and systems will integrate with existing systems like the South East Plan.

The main concerns are:

1. How independent will the Independent Commission be? How will they be appointed and what sort of people will be on it?
2. How realistic will it be for local people to get their voice heard for these nationally run projects?
3. How will the Independent Commission remain independent when the goal is to have more collaboration between the dvelopers and the Commission?

Click here to see what CADRA sent as offical feedback to the Major Infra-structure section of the white paper