PROPERTY MARKET OVERVIEW – Addendum

PROPERTY MARKET OVERVIEW – Addendum
November 2010


Planning

Secretary of State’s decision to revoke Regional Plans quashed

The Secretary of State’s decision to revoke Regional Plans (Strategies) immediately after the general election has been quashed by a High Court judge (10 November 2010) following a Judicial Review case brought by Cala Homes (South) Limited. Cala Homes are promoting a residential development near Winchester for 2,000 dwellings and its planning application is currently the subject of an Appeal.

The judge in giving his ruling found that:

1. The Secretary of State’s decision to revoke Regional Plans under the provisions of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 [the 2009 Act] was unlawful because the existence of Regional Plans is fundamental to this piece of legislation. Dispensing with Regional Plans would be a significant change to the 2009 Act, which could only be made by Parliament with the result that the Secretary of State had acted outside his statutory powers.

2. The Secretary of State’s decision breached the Strategic Environmental Assessment Regulations and was “unlawful”, because no consideration of the environmental effects of removing regional plans from the system had been undertaken.

Comment

Following this judgment all of the Regional Plans (or Strategies as they should more correctly be referred to under the 2009 Act) are reinstated as part of the Development Plan and are therefore material to the production of Local Development Framework (LDF) documents and the determination of planning applications.


However the continued existence of Regional Plans has been signaled by the Government to be short lived as the Government’s “Localism Bill”, expected to be enacted sometime towards the end of 2011, provides a vehicle for their revocation. The Communities Minister in a written ministerial statement on 10 November, responding to judgment, has stated that the Government remains committed to scrapping Regional Strategies.

In the immediate future local planning authorities are unlikely to want to expedite the production of their LDFs. This is because as things currently stand policies will need to be formulated in line with the housing and employment development levels set out in Regional Strategies which will only have a further shelf life of around a year. LDF production is likely to stall further while the new regime is formulated.

The reinstatement of Regional Strategies potentially has significant ramifications for planning application decisions made by the local planning authorities or the Secretary of State since the latter’s now ill-fated attempt to revoke the strategies in May. If refusal or dismissed Appeal decisions made since 27 May 2010 were founded upon the apparent abolition of the strategies, then potentially those decisions are open to challenge. Undetermined applications/appeals submitted after 27 May will now need to be justified against the relevant Regional Strategy requiring additional work to be undertaken by applicants or their advisors, resulting in additional costs and delays in the decision making process.

Property Market Overview Autumn 2010

Welcome to a new modern look for Michael Parkes Surveyors Limited.





Our new Property Market Overview is available to download at: http://www.michaelparkes.co.uk/documents/PMO_Autumn_2010_Final.pdf