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ArticlePlanning Update on Local Development Frameworks The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 heralded the most important reforms to the planning system in this country since the modern day system was first created in 1947. The 2004 Act reforms introduced, amongst other things, a brand new development plan making system to replace the current one, (which comprises county council Structure Plans and district council Local Plans), with new Regional Spatial Strategies, created by the Regional Assemblies, and Local Development Frameworks, a portfolio of local development documents (LDDs) containing policies created by local planning authorities. Many planners welcome the principle of the new Local Development Frameworks, as it is hoped they will make policy making by councils more flexible by enabling them to amend sections of their LDDs without the need to create whole new Local Plans, which previously took years to create and adopt. Nevertheless, three years on since the Act came into force, most local authorities are years away from transferring over to the new Local Development Frameworks. Nationwide, local planning authorities are still deep in the process of drafting their LDDs and going through local consultation processes. Most of these are not expected to be completed for several years. The key policy folders in the LDDs that local authorities must prepare are the Development Plan Documents (DPDs). Within this will be the Core Strategy, described as an umbrella document to all the other LDDs because it contains the primary planning policies for the area and determines how all the rest of the DPDs should look, such as Site Allocation Plans and Area Action Plans. Hence the Core Strategy document is for most local authorities the first LDD they aim to prepare. Once completed, and the consultation process finished, the DPDs must be submitted to the Planning Inspectorate for examination and assessment by way of nine tests of‘soundness’ set out under the 2004 Act. However, in August 2006, the whole process of local authorities preparing LDDs hit the buffers after Lichfield District Council and Stafford Borough Council, the first pioneer local authorities to submit their Core Strategy documents to the Inspectorate, had them both rejected by the examining inspectors as ‘unsound’. Both councils, who blame the government for lack of guidance on producing LDDs, now face the prospect of starting their plan making from scratch, putting back their eventual introduction by 2-3 years with inevitable costs consequences for local taxpayers. The experience of Lichfield and Stafford Councils has highlighted a problem in the 2004 Act which does not allow inspectors to approve new plans subject to amendments to certain DPDs, as necessary, so as to enable the overall plan to meet the criteria on soundness. Local authorities across the South East are now putting the submission of their LDDs to the Inspectorate on hold whilst they await further government guidance on how to prepare LDDs, particularly Core Strategies, and they are waiting to see if other local authorities have more success in the examination process. This is expected to delay the introduction of some new LDFs across the South East by years. For the time being, local authorities continue to operate on the planning policies contained in their existing Development Plans. Developers can check which sections of their Local Plan are still in force and which have been superseded by new LDDs by reference to the local development scheme which every authority must have and update annually. For further enquiries please contact Nick Horton (view full profile) on 01892 701313 or email nhorton@ts-p.co.uk. You will require the Adobe Acrobat Reader to read PDF files, this
is free to download if you do not already have it.
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