The government’s proposed reforms of the planning system have been attacked by Cambridge University’s professor of land economy Malcolm Grant.
Professor Grant told a committee of MPs this morning that the planning green paper lacked supporting analysis, despite being “far-reaching”.
He said: “The document sells an aspiration, and it tends more to rhetorical gusto than to intellectual depth.”
He warned that proposals to transform planning obligations into a tariff-based tax could be challenged under the Human Rights Act, as “a taxation power that operates arbitrarily and in an unforeseeable way will clearly be changeable under Article 1 of the First Protocol”.
Plans to allow Parliament to effectively grant outline planning permission and pass an environmental impact assessment on major infrastructure projects could also fall foul of EU law, Grant added.
According to EU law, Parliament would be obliged to ensure that all consultees are properly consulted, including other member states if necessary.
Grant, who is also editor of the Encyclopedia of Planning Law and Practice, was specialist adviser to the Parliamentary committee which introduced the Transport and Works Act in 1992.
EGi News 01/05/02
