Planning Bill, RIP?

A long time ago (well, June 2021 seems a long time ago after everything that has happened since then), I published a blog post under the title “Planning radicalised – or a damp squib?” You may recall that on the day before the Queen’s Speech last May, the PM made a great noise (accompanied by much ballyhoo in the press) asserting with his usual hyperbole that the government was definitely going ahead with the revolutionary changes to the planning system that had been promised in the heavily criticised White Paper that had been published in 2020. A Planning Bill was duly announced in the Queen’s Speech the following day.

However, it quickly became clear that the government was in fact nowhere near ready to go ahead with the promised Bill. It emerged in the weeks that followed that as a result of strenuous opposition within Tory ranks, the government was far less determined to press ahead with their planning proposals than the PM made out. Considerable alarm was caused among party loyalists early in May by the loss of control of several councils in the south of the country, as a result of growing public opposition to the perceived threat of development in traditionally Tory-held areas. Following the shock result of the Chesham and Amersham by-election in June, backbench Tory MPs became even more jumpy about the government’s proposed planning ‘reforms’, and the pressure on the government to drop or considerably water down their proposals only intensified.

For a time, ministers tried to bluff and bluster their way through this ‘noise’, and Robert Jenrick (then the Secretary of State) was sent out to ‘reassure’ Tory backbenchers that it wasn’t going to be as bad as all that. This, however, clearly failed to quell the disquiet in Tory ranks, which continued to intensify in light of the worrying election results and polling . As a result, it became increasingly clear that there would be substantial further delay in the introduction of the promised Planning Bill, while the government tried to decide how much of their proposals could still be taken forward. I predicted that a complete U-turn on the part of the government could not be ruled out, and I suggested that it would not be altogether surprising if the promised Planning Bill did not in fact come forward in the current parliamentary session, despite its announcement in the Queen’s Speech.

It seems that this is what has transpired. There are now apparently well-informed reports that the government has indeed dropped any intention of introducing a Planning Bill. To save face, ministers seem to be hinting sotto voce that they may instead pursue ‘incremental’ reforms to the planning system. Well, as I said before, let’s wait and see.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

Permitted Changes of Use – FOURTH EDITION

“The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things” - in this case, the important changes to the GPDO that became necessary last year as a result of the substantial recasting of the Use Classes Order the previous year.

The extensive changes to the Use Classes Order in September 2020 were clearly going to be followed by consequential amendments to the GPDO, especially to permitted development rights for changes of use in Parts 3 and 4 of its Second Schedule.

This has led to the most radical shake-up of these provisions since permitted development rights for changes of use began to be significantly expanded from 2013 onwards.

The new provisions came into force on 1 August 2021, and the forthcoming FOURTH EDITION of A Practical Guide to Permitted Changes of Use will contain a fully updated text explaining these legislative changes in detail.

Some significant expansion of PD rights has been brought about, notably Class MA, which permits the residential conversion of the wide range of buildings in commercial, business or service uses that now fall within Use Class E.

A number of PD rights have now been removed. A few of these were simply redundant, as a result of both the pre-existing use and the new use now falling within one and the same Use Class, so that a change of use from one to the other is no longer development at all.

Others have been replaced by new or enlarged PD rights under other Classes. For example, the revised and expanded Class A now embraces previous PD rights under Classes A, B, C, D, E and F (to the extent that some of these have not been rendered altogether redundant by the revised Use Classes Order).

This has left a number of PD rights that have been removed from the GPDO altogether without being replaced in any way. These are defined as ‘protected development’, and their life has been extended for a limited period. All these former PD rights are identified in the book, and the transitional rules that apply to them are explained in detail.

This FOURTH EDITION of A Practical Guide to Permitted Changes of Use will be an essential resource for property owners, developers and their professional advisers, giving them a completely up-to-date guide to this increasingly complicated and much-amended legislation.

Publication is due in a few weeks’ time, and will be followed on 5 May by a seminar in London to launch this new edition. These Bath Publishing seminars have proved to be extremely popular, and spaces are already filling up fast.

So, if you want to come to the seminar (with a copy of the book thrown in) or you just want to buy the book by itself, all you have to do is to click on the relevant button on the left-hand side of this page, and you will be taken straight to the Bath Publishing website, where you can get full details of the book and the seminar, and place an order.

© MARTIN H GOODALL