Validation of Planning Applications

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alan harvey flounders

Dear Department for Communities and Local Government,

F.O.I. request to Department for Communities and Local Government Monday 16th August 2010.
Dear F.O.I. Officer
(1 )
Would you please confirm or deny that the Validation of Planning Applications published in the Guidance to Local Planning Authorities is still the relevant Legislation. ( downloaded Monday 16th August 2010 )
(2)
Would you please confirm or deny that the National Requirements outlined in appendix A. is still a legal requirement. In particular :-

The Completed Ownership Certificates ( A.B.C.or D.- as applicable ) as required by Article 7 of the Town and Country Planning ( General Development Procedure ) Order 1995. And if not an explanation,
(3)
Would you please confirm or deny any of the under mentioned common reason for Invalidity are still a requirement :-

(a)
Supporting documents that omitted information specified in the guidance notes accompanying the planning application form and/or set out in national guidance , statutory development plan or supplementary planning guide.
(b)
Submitted drawings did not show sufficient details as specified in the guidance notes or are inconsistent.
( c )
Building work encroaching on the neighbouring property.
(d)
Incorrect signed or unsigned certificates.
(e)
Insufficient copies of plans and forms submitted.
(f)
Inconsistency between elevations and floor plans.
(g)
Information still inadequate after one or more requests to the applicant for further details.

Yours faithfully,

alan harvey flounders

alan harvey flounders left an annotation ()

I am in the process of writing a blog, and intend to save and publish all my history of my F.O.I. requests on this site,

Jillian Hastings,

Dear Sir,

Thanks for your enquiry to the Department for Communities and Local Government. The answers to your questions are:

1) The Legislation setting out the statutory requirements for a valid planning application in England is the Town and Country Planning (General Development Procedure) Order (GDPO), which is available on the Government's legislation website www.legislation.gov.uk . This is accompanied by Policy and Guidance, which CLG updated in March 2010 and posted the following web addresses:
Policy: http://www.communities.gov.uk/publicatio...
Guidance: http://www.communities.gov.uk/publicatio...

2) The Annex of the previous Guidance (to which you refer) was removed when the guidance document was updated in March 2010.

However, ownership certificates remain a statutory requirement, as they are specified in the GDPO (article 7). The standard wording for these ownership certificates (A, B, C and D) is provided as an integral part of the planning application forms which can be found on the Planning Portal website http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/england... .

3) Beyond the statutory requirements in the GDPO, it is up to local planning authorities to decide whether any further information is required in order to make the application valid.
Typically, the local authority should consider whether the applicant has provided sufficient information in order for the nature, scale and anticipated impacts of the development proposal to be understood by the authority and/or the public. This is explained further in the Policy and Guidance documents identified in 1) above - (see Policy INF 4, and Guidance sections 3-5 in particular).

Local authorities may have lists of common reasons for invalidity, and may publish these as part of their own guidance to applicants, but this is up to them. CLG does not prescribe a standard list of reasons why an application may not be valid. It is up to individual local authorities to assess each application individually, in light of the nature, scale, context and anticipated impacts of the proposed development.

Yours sincerely,
Jillian Hastings

Jillian Hastings MRTPI
Planning - Development Management
Communities and Local Government
Zone 1/J2, Eland House
Bressenden Place
London SW1E 5DU
switchboard: 0303 444 0000

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