First Amendment To A Development Consent Order

Today's entry reports on the first time that a Development Consent Order has been amended.

The consent that emerges from an application under the Planning Act 2008 is known as a 'Development Consent Order' or DCO, although it is not normally called that in the Act itself. Oddly, it is only called a DCO in Schedule 6, which suggests a different person may have drafted that Schedule.

And it is Schedules 4 and 6 that are of interest to us today, because they deal with changes to DCOs. There are essentially three levels of change: corrections, non-material changes and material changes. A couple of weeks ago an order was made correcting a previously granted DCO, more on that later.

Corrections

The government can correct a DCO if

the DCO contains an error but the reasons for the decision do not contain the error the government has been asked to correct the error within six weeks of the DCO being published or spots it itself and tells the project promoter the government has told the local authority/ies where the project is about the proposed correction (although they don't seem to get a chance to respond) Non-material changes

The government can make non-material changes to a DCO and there is a process of notification of and consultation on the proposed changes. Corrections are free but non-material changes cost the precise sum of £6,891 plus advertisement costs. As an example of a non-material change, the Act lists changes to requirements and imposition of new requirements. If you ask me, though, why would you want to make a non-material change? If there was any point in making the change, then surely it is material. There is an existing process for making non-material amendments to planning permissions that will be of some help in interpreting this, but as Bristol City Council's website states: Anything but the most insignificant change would need to be submitted as a new planning application.

Incidentally, the non-material change process has a provision in it that could usefully be applied to DCOs in general: The applicant need not consult a person or authority specified above, if the [government] is satisfied that this is not necessary [and must publish reasons for doing so on its website]. I have previously said that the provisions to change DCOs, which were added later, looked as though they contained some drafting that the government probably wished it had applied to the main process in the first place and this is an example of that...