Greg Mulholland – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Greg Mulholland on 2016-09-05.
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to enable communities with neighbourhood plans that are (a) complete and (b) being developed to appeal against planning decisions that conflict with that plan.
Gavin Barwell
The Neighbourhood Planning Bill will strengthen neighbourhood planning, by requiring local planning authorities and others who decide planning applications to have regard to neighbourhood plans that have been independently examined, once the decision has been taken to put the plan to a referendum.The Bill would also ensure plans have full legal weight at an earlier stage of the process, as soon as the outcome of the referendum is announced, and make it easier to ensure plans can be kept up to date.
These measures are in addition to existing safeguards that ensure neighbourhood plans are given proper consideration, including existing powers for communities to request that the Secretary of State ‘calls-in’ planning applications for his own determination, and new requirements introduced in the Housing and Planning Act, that will require any conflict with a made neighbourhood plan to be set out in the committee report that will inform a planning committee decision.
Furthermore, national planning policy is clear that where a planning application conflicts with a neighbourhood plan that has been brought into force, planning permission should not normally be granted, and that decision-makers may give weight to policies in emerging neighbourhood plans according to the stage of preparation of the plan, the extent of unresolved objections, and the degree of consistency with the National Planning Policy Framework.
In the light of these safeguards, the government does not support a right of appeal for those opposed to a decision to grant planning permission, which would delay the building of the new homes we need.
