On 10th October the Neighbourhood Planning Bill received an unopposed Second Reading in the House of Commons. It includes two changes with respect to planning conditions in a new section 100ZA of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Regulations may be made limiting the ability to impose planning conditions by prohibiting the imposition of conditions or allowing certain conditions to only be applied in prescribed circumstances. These regulations may only be made to ensure that conditions are necessary, relevant, sufficiently precise and reasonable. This does not envisage a different usage of conditions: their scope is not widened and any restrictions will simply reflect current policy expectations on the use of conditions.
The second element is the proposed section 100ZA(5) that “Planning permission … may not be granted subject to a pre-commencement condition without the written agreement of the applicant to the terms of the condition.”
Regulations may provide that this requirement does not apply in prescribed circumstances and the need for written agreement will not apply to outline planning permissions. Pre-commencement conditions are those which must be complied with before operational development or a material change of use is begun. In such cases the local planning authority have to provide
a list of pre-commencement conditions to the applicant before granting permission. The question in practice will be what happens next? If the applicant declines to agree it may be that revised conditions can be agreed.
In those cases the authority could decide that some details are unnecessary or that they can be dealt with by a particular stage following commencement. However, if the authority still insists on pre-commencement conditions which the applicant does not accept, then it will ultimately have to refuse permission. The applicant will know that if it holds out it could face a refusal on the basis that conditions have not been agreed. Both parties would have to decide whether they are prepared for the cost (and in the developer’s shoes, the delay) of an appeal.
Watch this space for the next update as the bill proceeds through parliament.