New advice published on ministerial propriety

Communities and Local Government has published detailed guidance on the propriety issues surrounding the exercise of the Secretary of State’s decision-making functions in individual planning cases as well as decisions on regional spatial strategies and local development documents.

The guidance is designed to make sure decisions are properly taken and to avoid the risk of successful legal challenges.

The 14-page note provides advice for CLG ministers and considers the position of ministers in other departments and that of Parliamentary Private Secretaries, ministerial special advisers and officials.

The note made it clear that a planning minister "should not discuss a planning case with any interested party to a decision. This advice applies, in particular, to decisions on recovered planning appeals and called-in planning applications".

The advice said ministers should decline requests for meetings from "MPs, delegations of local people, parties to an appeal or a called-in application, pressure groups or any other party who may wish to make representation about a particular planning matter. The same principle applies to other forms of contact with interested parties, including telephone calls".

The advice also covers how ministers should behave in their role as constituency MPs. "Planning ministers are not precluded from making representations on matters affecting their constituents' interests. But they must make clear that they are acting as their constituents' representative and expressly not as a planning minister, and that they will not take any part in any subsequent decision on the matter".

In cases where planning ministers are involved in dealing with local planning authorities on planning matters in their constituencies "planning ministers should not do anything to influence the decision, and they should take particular care not to give any impression of wielding ministerial influence.

"They are quite free to make representations, therefore, so long as these are made openly and on the basis that they will be made available to all interested parties for comment. The Permanent Secretary should be advised of any such interest," said the note.

Download Guidance on Planning Propriety Issues (PDF, 112kb).

Roger Milne

9 October 2008