THE UNFAIRNESS OF THE PLANNING APPEALS SYSTEM

Planning Appeals and the recent Consultation

There are no plans at the moment to extend a right of appeal against a planning permission already granted. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has however just concluded a short consultation on extending third parties’ rights to comment on a planning appeal.

A key concern identified by the consultation was that there should be a greater fairness to all parties involved at the various stages of the appeal process. It was considered anomalous that the rules do not allow third parties to see and comment on the main parties statements. This is because both the main party and the third party must submit their statements to the Inspectorate within 6 weeks. It is therefore beneficial for the main party to submit his statement at the very end of the 6 week period, thus preventing the third party from answering some or all of the main parties appeal issues. The consultation process has recommended that the appellant in a planning appeal still has the 6 weeks in which to lodge statements but the objector has 9 weeks to challenge the appeal statements. Thus the third party has 3 extra weeks in which to address an argument to the appellants statement.

Many people believe that the present arrangement for Planning Appeals disadvantages third parties. A third party can only object to a planning application, they cannot object by appeal against a properly approved scheme, where a local planning authority has given planning permission. This would seem unfair but the consequence of allowing both developer and objector to appeal against that permission could lead to one appeal after another in a never ending set of appeals. It would seem that the consultation just finished, came to this same conclusion.

John Noyes

Archive Summer 2004 | next

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