Red tape challenge for planning starts to take effect

This entry reports on the first results of the 'red tape challenge' taking effect for planning law.

Background

Over the last couple of years the government has been conducting an initiative to cut red tape, meaning unnecessary regulations. It has focused on different areas of law at a time and back in January 2013 'planning administration' entered its sights - see this blog entry.

Planning administration was subdivided into four areas and one of these was 'planning infrastructure and major projects'. The government solicited online comments as part of the consultation. It now says it 'crowd-sourced' the regulations - echoes of 'beta testing' the planning practice guidance. The lengths the government will go to to (a) avoid using the word 'consultation' and (b) try to look a bit cool and 'web 2.0' increase by the day.

At the end of October 2013 it published the results of the exercise, or rather what it had decided it would do with each of the regulations under scrutiny - see this blog entry.

Latest developments

The government has now published the Town and Country Planning (Revocations) Regulations 2014 and the Town and Country Planning (Revocations) Order 2014, which will both come into force on 14 April. These list 11 regulations and seven orders that are to be revoked. Did you know that Acts are 'repealed', whereas secondary legislation is 'revoked'? You can also see that regulations are revoked by revocation regulations and orders are revoked by revocation orders (itself a bit of unnecessary red tape, perhaps), hence the two statutory instruments.

The orders are a miscellaneous hotch-potch of specific provisions such as an order only relating to the London Borough of Camden. Nine of the regulations are to do with costs of inquiries etc., the tenth consists of some transitional arrangements about local plans when the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 came in, and the eleventh - drum roll, please - is part of the Planning Act 2008 regime.

Rather than the crash of cymbals, it is more of a parp of a horn, though, since the regulations being scrapped will be little used - they are the list of organisations that the government must consult when it publishes a National Policy Statement (NPS) in draft. This list is much the same as the list that a prospective developer must consult before it makes an application, but the government has decided that telling itself whom to consult is unnecessary red tape. Telling other people whom to consult is an essential bureaucratic safeguard and will remain. I also note with a sigh that 'infrastructure planning' regulations have been classified as common or garden 'town and country planning' regulations - has it come to this?

The explanatory note to the revocation regulations says that the NPS consultation regulations are 'redundant', which is not quite true - 'unnecessary' might have been a better word. Although the National Networks NPS was published in draft in December, there are still two or three NPSs to come - allegedly. The Water Resources NPS will be drafted when some water projects merit it, the Airports NPS will be published following the Airports Commission's final report in summer 2015, and a Nuclear Waste Storage NPS has also been promised. Not so redundant, but the government gets some welcome flexibility.

Curiously these are only a small number of the planning orders and regulations that were to be scrapped as part of the red tape challenge, and even only about half of the fees regulations that were to be scrapped - just the ones with 'standard daily amount' in their names. Regulations for fees relating to examinations in public remain on the statute book for the moment, as does the good old Town and Country Planning (Ironstone Areas Special Development) Order 1950. Presumably further revocations will occur in due course, but these may not be until October now, the six-monthly target for secondary legislation to aim for.