Budget signals key issues for Planning White Paper
A new framework for positive planning for economic development will be proposed in the Planning White Paper due later this spring, according to the Government's latest Budget Report.
The report, the eleventh produced by Chancellor Gordon Brown, stressed that the forthcoming policy document would include measures designed to ensure that "planning takes a positive approach to sustainable economic development".
Included will be "a more explicit role for market signals to inform plans and planning decisions", said the report.
The Treasury document also promised "a substantial improvement in the process for obtaining planning permission for all users with clearer and simpler processes and quicker handling of appeals cases, backed by a more efficient plan-making process".
As already highlighted, the White Paper will set out a new single system of planning for major infrastructure with final decisions taken by an Independent Planning Commission.
In a related development the Budget Report also clarified some aspects of the Government's thinking on the Planning Gain Supplement (PGS). Ministers have not yet decided whether to press ahead with the new tax and are due to decide later this year.
Ministers have now decided that the local share of the PGS which will accrue to the local authority area involved – 70 per cent of the tax revenue - will be paid direct to the local planning authority (LPA) concerned.
The remaining revenues will be returned to the region where it is raised and placed in a special fund where it will be available for regional infrastructure priorities.
Whitehall has decided that LPAs will be required to undertake "sound infrastructure planning as part of the formation and review of their so-called Local Development Frameworks, maximising the use of existing infrastructure and deploying demand management options before setting out plans for new infrastructure".
In a further Budget initiative the Treasury has launched a consultation on brownfield land tax incentives. The government is considering the reform of land remediation relief and the landfill tax exemption.
The administration has said it is keen to explore whether the introduction of a planning permission condition would be the most effective way to target relief more closely on development.
Roger Milne
23 March 2007
Advertisement:
© Crown Copyright 2007