Jeremy's Blog 29th September 2023: Permitted Development Rights
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 28th September 2023
Permitted development rights can be seen as one means to save the over-stretched and under resourced planning system from itself, a safety valve allowing investment in and change for the future.
A member has recently had to make a full planning application for two environmental ponds, one 3m by 3m and the other 5m by 8m, in an AONB that, among other things, required a dark skies assessment, a relative tranquility statement, a soil management plan, a landscape character appraisal and a biodiversity statement. What is a planning system doing when it so badly fails at larger things but spends such effort on this, lacking perspective and proportionality? Where officers recommend approval, as with the Cuxton winery, local campaigns can derail a £30 million investment seeing opportunity in climate change. Success in applications becomes a matter of money, effort and gamesmanship – and then luck.
A 1940s system intended to make considered judgements about competing land uses is now mired in local politics, often adverse to development, with depleted staff, all too often leaving responsibility to the appeal system. Among the growing pressures, many authorities are wrestling with nutrient neutrality, biodiversity net gain is to apply from January and Local Nature Recovery Strategies are to be developed and applied.
This all makes England’s recent consultation and call for evidence on permitted development rights so welcome, with its large focus on agricultural and environmental matters. As it closed on Monday, the CAAV submitted a 31 page response with arguments and proposals to carry this forward, drawing on existing analysis and discussion in recent committees and last week’s Council meeting.
Permitted development rights effectively grant national planning permission for defined developments, subject to limitations and conditions, though local authorities can withdraw them with an Article 4 direction. They can remove much trivia from the system but can also support the delivery of public policies – as shown by the increased rights for telecoms masts to aid connectivity. They are there to be used by clients and will be covered at the coming CAAV Autumn Briefings on October 12th (Harrogate and hybrid) and October 18th
(Wyboston near Huntingdon).
England has already been proactive, as shown by the introduction of Classes Q and R in 2014 and increasing the size of permitted agricultural buildings to 1,000m2 in 2018. Scotland has followed, if sometimes in more complex ways, on both points and introduced a right for peatland restoration works. Wales and Northern Ireland have been less active.
The result is a twin track planning system. The formal regime hinders development while permitted development rights allow ways round it, easing flexible change. In seven years, they have been used to create over 90,000 dwellings without specific planning permissions – some using Class Q, more through rights to convert offices, shops and other commercial uses that might achieve more high street regeneration than the planning system.
This all becomes particularly critical for the development needed for climate change, environmental matters and farming productivity. Public policy becomes self-defeating if planning unreasonably frustrates renewable energy, habitat creation or slurry stores. Failing to manage this change well now simply stores problems and larger change for the future. The recent consultation offers larger and wider permitted development rights as an answer for this.
Yet they often interact with other regulatory regimes such as Environmental Impact Assessments and the responsibilities of other bodies, adding cost, delay and uncertainty. The CAAV’s response calls for regulatory reform to streamline this, not to lower standards but to simplify, clarity and speed processes. Perhaps not all need be done by the planning system.
The planning system should not exist just to say “No”, whether by direct refusal or the attrition of complexity, cost, delay and the deterrence of those factors for potential applicants. An encrusted and overloaded system needs thorough change if we are to meet the challenges facing us.