The CBI has urged the Government to separate commercial applications from household applications and to create a more defined role for planning officers, as part of the Labour Party’s drive to shake-up the planning system.
The demands are included in a detailed list of 40 proposals aimed at reforming the planning system, entitled Planning for Productivity.
The CBI’s deputy director general John Cridland unveiled the demands saying that the current system was “too slow, had too many uncertainties and led to too many poor decisions”.
The document criticises Lord Falconer’s insistence that local authorities rigidly adhere to an eight-week decision target. “More emphasis should be put on targets measuring the quality of the decision (for example, through satisfaction surveys) as well as the speed of decision,” it stated.
Cridland said that the proposals “could quickly make a real difference to the planning system and the culture that underpins it”.
The document stated that delays in the planning system cost businesses around £600m. CBI business environment policy adviser, Sepidah Shayegan, said: “This figure is simply the costs incurred because of delays. The overall cost, accounting for bad decisions and so on, would be several billion pounds. Too often the system is acting as a brake on productivity.”
The CBI recommends that commercial applications be considered as a separate entity to household applications. It claims that under the present system major commercial applications, which account for only 3% pa, were being swamped by household applications, many of which could be covered by extending rules on ‘”permitted development” and “deemed consent”.
The CBI also called for time limits to be set for each key part of the process, including when the Secretary of State has to decide upon a call in. Michael Roberts, head of business environment for CBI, said the time limits should be on a “sliding scale”.
Cridland backed Roberts up saying: “It cannot be right that decisions, on which jobs and future prosperity depend, are treated in the same way as an application for a kitchen extension.”
The document also called for a change in the way the workload was distributed within the planning authority. It advocated only sending major applications to committee, where instead of unanimous vote only a majority would be needed for it to be passed. The rest would be left to planning officers, who would have to be better trained and resourced. The CBI recommended that skilled planning officers should stay with projects right the way through the process.
The CBI also called for Regional Development Agencies to become statutory consultants on local plans, and on applications of regional importance.
Also among the proposals was a call for “clearer national guidelines” for planning gain, stopping local authorities from funding “activities completely unrelated to the development in question”.
EGi News 24/07/01
