New Guidance About Procedures for Handling Planning and Related Appeals and Inquiries

Two new publications will be of interest to those involved in appeals under the Town and County Planning (Scotland) Acts and applications for wind farms and other consents under Section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989.

The Department for Planning and Environmental Appeals (DPEA) has just published (April and May 2011) its internal guidance notes for Reporters. In essence these give guidance to Reporters about how they should apply the procedures in practice. This is of particular interest as they give good insight into how planning appeals are likely to be handled. They relate to the handling of Planning Permission appeals, Enforcement Notice appeals, Certificate of Lawful Use or Development appeals, Tree Works Consent appeals, Tree Replacement Enforcement Notice appeals, Amenity Notice appeals, Planning Obligation Appeals, and Good Neighbour Agreement Appeals.

There are 15 guidance notes in total. These include guidance for sisting an appeal, time limits on planning permissions, the circumstances which may lead to an appeal being subject to a hearing or an inquiry session, site inspections (accompanied and unaccompanied), how the timescales for appeal submissions will be applied, the roles of Reporters at development plan examinations, planning obligations appeals and good neighbour appeals. Each guidance note is clearly set out to give the types of appeal to which the note relates, the legislative background, the DPEA practice guidance, and the processes involved.

For instance guidance note 7 gives Reporters advice on the types of cases where appeals are likely to be handled without any further procedures (including in some cases no site inspection). For example, for planning permission appeals the list includes appeals relating to conditional approvals where a condition is being challenged, and proposals for development which would clearly contravene national planning policy or clear development plan policy where there is no evidence of material considerations to outweigh this. The list also includes cases where the planning authority does not defend the appeal (particularly non-determination cases where the authority indicates that it would have granted permission), cases where an application for renewal of planning permission has been made and there has been no material change of circumstances since the previous grant of permission, and several other types of cases.

Another example is guidance note 6, which relates to site inspections. This advises Reporters that in many cases an unaccompanied inspection will be all that is required: an inspection should not be carried out on an accompanied basis simply because a party has asked for this or because there are a lot of objectors.

These guidance notes provide greater transparency about how Reporters arrive at their decisions for handling appeals, and they should help to ensure consistency across the DPEA service. They can be found here.

The other guidance which was published on 10 May 2011 is the “Code of Practice for Handling Inquiries under Section 62 and Schedule 8 to the Electricity Act”.

This publication effectively updates the procedures relating to the handling of Section 36 Applications and brings them into line with the modernised planning procedures for planning related appeals. It sets out the arrangements which the DPEA will apply, to ensure all parties are clear about what will happen and what is expected of them in inquiries under the Electricity Act 1989.

The Code of Practice can be found here.

We welcome the publication of both the Guidance Notes and the new Code of Practice. These should lead to greater consistency in the manner in which appeals are handled, and formally bring the electricity consenting process into line with planning procedures. They will help to ensure that these processes are fair, transparent, robust and efficient.

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