Amendments and Next steps

The measures were tidied up and amended in a number of ways since the original Bill began life in the House of Lords.

The main changes were:

• give more influence to county councils (through changes to Clause 4) and the public (regional public participation statements);
• retain outline planning permissions (the development industry was very unhappy at the potential end of that aspect of development control);
• drop the proposal for so-called Statements of Development Principles (SDP)
• strengthen the sustainable development clause;
• require the standard application form provisions to have access and design statements in appropriate circumstances;
• introduce enabling provisions to deal with the vexed issue of mezzanine floors;
• require reasons for substantive decisions;
• amend the major infrastructure provisions to require an economic impact report;
• allow for temporary stop notices; and
• provide for appeals on second applications.

Next steps

For ministers, developers, the public, councils and the planning profession what counts now is how the new regimes set out in the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 work out in practice.

Critics have suggested the legislation could made the planning system overly complicated and less democratic.

However, ministers deny this and insist the legislation will mean a new system to 'make better plans and make better planning decisions more quickly'.