Three Infrastructure Regulations About To Change

Today's entry reports on changes to three sets of regulations under the Planning Act 2008 coming into force this Saturday.

The Planning Act regime includes a raft of secondary legislation that governs the detail of applying for development consent, examining applications and so on.

Following on from a consultation on 'expanding and improving the one stop shop' held from 26 November to 7 January, to which the government responded last month, the government has decided to introduce amending regulations in three areas:

'clarifying' the fees charged for examinations cutting down the statutory bodies that are consulted and notified about applications; and reducing the consents that need the permission of the body that would have granted them before they can be included in a development consent order (DCO) instead. Before going into details, I would make two points about these changes:

first, they emphasise the changing nature of the Planning Act regime, and the importance of using up to date materials, rather than the Act and regulations when they were originally drafted - in other words, don't try this at home, and secondly, take care as to which applications the changes apply to. They apply to all applications where no formal steps have been taken by tomorrow at all, they don't apply to any applications already made, but it's quite complicated for the remainder, i.e. ones where some formal step has been taken short of making an application. Fee changes

The fee changes are not really in response to the consultation but in response to representations made during the passage of the Growth and Infrastructure Bill that the basis on which applicants were being charged for examinations was incorrect.

The changes put the basis for charging beyond doubt, but still leave the issue open of applicants who have already been charged.

The new basis is that the daily rate will be charged for every working day between the start and end of the examination - and weekends, if work on the application was 'required' then. Any suspensions of the application while either a National Policy Statement is being reviewed or further environmental information has been demanded do not count, nor do any days that the Secretary of State decides not to charge due to sickness or some other cause. There is a rare lapse from what is now the norm of gender-neutral drafting in that last provision.

I just can't agree with the goverment that these changes do not make any practical...