The government has bowed to industry pressure and scrapped a controversial plan to replace planning gain with tariffs.
The proposal, which was one of a clutch of “radical” reforms laid out in the planning green paper last December, has now been dropped.
Changes that would have given parliament the power to decide on major infrastructure projects and strip county councils of their planning powers have also been watered down.
Speaking in the House of Commons yesterday, deputy prime minister John Prescott dodged the subject of planning tariffs.
However, a spokesman for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister confirmed: “There will be no new legislation to introduce a tariff, but new guidance will be issued to make the existing section 106 policy more transparent and simple.”
The tariff system, which had been described by members of the property industry as “yet another stealth tax”, would have replaced negotiable, site-specific payments of planning gain drawn up under section 106 agreements.
The policy would have imposed a series of standard predefined charges for planning consents based on development value or size.
The government had been planning to put through legislation to implement the tariff system after the summer recess.
Chris Morely, director of planning at the BPF, said: “We welcome the decision not to pursue legislation.
“We had expressed concern to government that there was need to devise a fair and transparent system that would not penalise redevelopment and regeneration, and that the autumn was too soon for legislation on such a complex issue.”
The government’s report on the changes to the policies in the planning green paper skirted the fact the government had performed a volte-face.
“Our consultation document proposed several options for reforming the system of negotiated planning obligations (also known as section 106 agreements). The lead option was to replace the negotiated agreements as far as possible, by a locally set tariff.”
It continued: “The objectives of our tariff proposal were widely welcomed by a majority of respondents to consultation, subject to seeing the detail. We have decided that many of our objectives can be delivered without legislative change.
“We will revise our policy guidance and work with all the relevant stakeholders to create a more streamlined system that will enable the community to share in the benefits arising from development.
“We will also carry forward the measures in the consultation paper for making the present system more transparent and predictable. For example, we have already required planning obligations to be entered on the planning register to ensure that they are open to public inspection.”
See Saturday’s Estates Gazette for the full version of this story.
EGi News 19/07/02
