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The Powers of Delegation

The new planning laws that were recently implemented now grant special powers to our planning officers. Individual planning officers are allowed under delegated authority to approve a very wide range of planning applications without reference to the Planning Committee. The significance of this change is that many applications, which are controversial and strongly opposed by the public, can be approved by a planning officer without the additional protection of the application being reviewed by your elected representative. The reasons given by the Government in introducing this change was to speed up the process. The Government target was for at least 90% of all applications to be dealt with in this way.

Allow me to quote a few of the rules:

A1(a) Any application may be authorised by the planning officer...where no material objections have been received. (What constitutes "material" and who decides whether the term applies?)

A1(c) Any application may be authorised by the planning officer...for listed buildings or Conservation Areas notwithstanding any objections that may have been received -subject only to the conservation officer finding the proposal acceptable. (This rule suggests we need to make sure we have a good relationship with our conservation officer. We had with our last one but unfortunately he has now left and not been replaced to my knowledge.)

A1(i) Subject to (l) below...[the planning officer may] approve any application regardless of any objections received in respect of:

A1(l) The delegated authority cannot be exercised in any case where a member of the Committee has specifically requested, for sound policy reasons, that the matter be referred to the Committee for determination, and that such request has been notified to the planning officers within 21 days of the application being registered. (You will have noticed the caveat "for sound policy reasons". Does our district councillor then have to argue with the planning officer about which policy he or she is intervening under?)

This increase in the powers of the bureaucracy to control our lives can only be mitigated by making sure that where you have significant objections to any application you make contact with your district councillor – in our case George Sandy – to gain his support in fighting your corner of England.

Fred Russell