Howes Percival
Wide ranging reform to the real estate industry
The government has set out bold ambitions in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023, ‘to speed up the planning system, hold developers to account, cut bureaucracy, and encourage …. the building of new homes’ and ‘deliver revitalised high streets’. So what does the Act actually
do? Currently, not much, because essentially, it’s a framework that leaves most of the detail to be fl eshed out by secondary legislation. Nonetheless, the Act introduces sweeping and signifi cant reforms. T e Act is wide-ranging so this arti-
cle focuses primarily on the planning proposals. Key amendments include:
■ A power for central government to impose a timetable on local planning authorities (LPAs) for adoption of local plans, together with a new power for the Secretary of State to take over the plan-making process if it considers a LPA’s performance unsatisfactory. Last year’s consultation proposed 30 months, significantly shorter than the current average (according to the consultation) of seven years.
Alexandra Kirkwood Partner Howes Percival
■ Limiting the scope of local plans to locally specifi c matters and introduc- ing National Development Management Policies (NDMPs) for national issues such as climate change, greenbelt and heritage. NDMPs should help LPAs produce shorter local plans more quickly as they will only have to consider local issues. Planning decisions will be made in accordance with the local plan and any NDMP but confl icts are to be resolved in favour of NDMPs, eff ectively elevating their status above local plans.
■ An extension to the current enforcement period for planning breaches in England from four to ten years in the case of unauthorised dwellings, bringing it into line with other planning breach enforcement time periods.
■ Fast-tracking development consent orders by shortening the deadline for examination of applications.
■ A new reporting system to help LPAs monitor progress on new develop- ments. Developers must give LPAs a commencement notice specifying the date on which they expect to begin development of certain types of land with planning permission (to be prescribed) and submit annual progress reports. If an LPA believes a development will not be completed within a reasonable time, it can serve a completion notice specifying a deadline which must be at least 12 months away. If the deadline is not met, the planning permission will fall away, necessitating a new one.
■ Giving LPAs power to refuse to decide planning applications for devel- opment of a (yet to be) prescribed description where a developer has a track record of building out too slowly or not implementing planning permissions at all.
■ Replacing the Community Infrastructure Levy and section 106 agreements with a new Infrastructure Levy charged as a percentage of the value of the property at completion, to ‘simplify and speed up’ the process.
■ Replacing Environmental Impact Assessments with Environmental Out- comes Reports (EORs), an outcomes-based system, the outcome being an ‘increase in the abundance of protected species and supporting habitat’. EOR regulations must not result in a lower level of environmental protec- tion under environmental law than at October 2023.
ALL THINGS BUSINESS | 8
CONSTRUCTION, LAND & DEVELOPMENT
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