Back in December 2009, Adrian Penfold, the head of planning and environment at British Land, was asked to review the regimes for obtaining non-planning consents for property development projects. In July 2010, after considering the evidence submitted by interested parties, he made 12 recommendations that aimed to speed-up decision making, reduce duplication, and reduce bureaucracy in determining non-planning consents. I summarised these recommendations at the time.

In its formal response, published on 3 November 2010, the Government has generally welcomed the Review’s recommendations and plans, amongst other things, to take the following key actions:

1. Set up meetings to allow consenting bodies to share examples of best practice;

2. Encourage local authorities and other public bodies to publish their performance data to promote transparency;

3. Ensure that public bodies co-operate with businesses in their efforts to develop in an environmentally sustainable way;

4. Produce a quality development code by spring 2011;

5. Provide developers with a contact at the Highways Agency who will work with the developer, local planning authority and local highways authority;

6. Improve access to information;

7. Merge conservation area consent with planning permission, when possible;

8. Consider whether any changes to the village greens registration system are required; and

9. Expand the Environmental Permitting regime.

The Government accepts that it needs to clarify the boundary between planning and non-planning consents. It believes that it can achieve this through reforming the planning system (as outlined in October’s White Paper, Local Growth: Realising Every Place’s Potential and the forthcoming Decentralisation and Localism Bill, which will require local authorities to produce local development plans.) The Government will also monitor the operation of development consent orders, and continue to look at options for merging highways consents with planning permission.

These proposals are encouraging for developers, but the recent spending cuts and lack of detail may contribute to the policy ‘vacuum’ that developers have had to put up with over the past few months. Click here to read about Cala Homes (South) Ltd’s successful judicial review of the Government’s decision to abolish the Regional Strategies.

The next stage

The Government will publish an update to its response in spring 2011, after assessing how much progress has been made in implementing these changes.

The Penfold Review has now been published and has made 12 recommendations for change:

1. Reinforcing a service culture

The Government should ensure that non-planning consent decision makers (1) recognise the contribution they make to sustainable development through the decisions they make on non-planning consents; (2) publish a quality development code; (3) publish annual performance statistics; and (4) undertake customer satisfaction surveys.

2. Improving co-ordination and governance

The Government should (1) encourage local planning authorities (LPAs) to adopt development management good practice; and (2) ensure that non-planning consenting bodies include a clear statement in their quality development code about guidance and advice they offer at the pre-application stage.

3. Addressing resource pressures

The Government should promote good working practices in resource-sharing, behaviour and culture by (1) encouraging LPAs to work with each other and the private sector; (2) requiring non-planning consent decision makers to make more efficient use of resources; and (3) enabling consenting bodies to charge for discretionary services.

4. Improving the accessibility of information

The Government should improve the quality of advice and information available through BusinessLink and the Planning Portal.

5. Simplifying the landscape

The Government should reduce the number of non-planning consents by (1) reviewing non-planning consents that have not been reviewed for more than ten years to ascertain whether they are still needed; (2) merging conservation area consent with planning permission; (3) merging listed building consent and scheduled monument consent; and (4) merging water abstraction and impoundment consents with the environmental permitting regime.

6. Improving proportionality

The Government should (1) increase the number of small commercial developments and small non-residential developments that are treated as de minimus (i.e. falling below designated thresholds requiring a consent application); (2) Identify the current consent requirements that would be suitable for a process below formal consent application or where deeming consent is appropriate; and (3) review the inquiry and appeal processes for planning and non-planning consent with a view to standardising and simplifying related processes.

7. Clarifying the boundary between planning and non-planning consents

The Government should (1) ensure that the revised national planning policy framework confirms the centrality of the planning process in determining whether a development should go ahead; (2) ensure LPAs have robust local development documents in place; (3) promote the use of pre-application discussions; and (4) create clear rules of engagement between LPAs and the non-planning consent decision makers.

8. Making changes to specific regimes

The Government should clarify what is material to planning and non-planning consent regimes, remove duplication and reduce the need for detailed design work.

9. Facilitating integration of planning and non-planning consents

The Government should encourage more LPAs to offer an improved and integrated planning and non-planning consents service.

10. Extending unification of planning and non-planning consents

The Government should consider extending the use of development consent orders to a wider range of projects.

11. Providing oversight of the planning and non-planning consents landscape

The Government should create a new body responsible for maintaining central oversight of the planning and non-planning consents.

12. Making change happen

The Government should develop an action plan to implement the recommendations of the Penfold Review.

The next step

The Penfold Review’s recommendations have been welcomed by the British Property Federation and the Home Builders Federation. The Government will now consider the recommendations and publish a formal response in autumn 2010. Full details of the recommendations are here.