The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has published its response to the consultation on proposals for streamlining and simplifying the planning appeals process, which it launched in November last year.
The DCLG said in the response that it plans to take forward a number of proposals set out in the consultation, including a shortening of the time between the start of the appeal and the appeal event. This will involve earlier dates for hearings and inquiries of less than three days' duration, whilst inquiries lasting longer than three days will be offered a bespoke timetable.
Measures will be introduced to make the process more transparent by requiring the persons appealing to submit their full statement of case when they appeal, and by requiring local planning authorities to notify interested parties of an appeal and to submit their questionnaire within one week.
The appellant will be required to submit a draft statement of common ground up-front and the appellant and the local planning authority will be required to submit a jointly agreed version within five weeks.
The DCLG said that, in addition to the Government's new planning guidance website which launched in beta mode last month, the Planning Inspectorate will publish a consolidated procedural guide to reflect the changes introduced as a result of the appeals review on 1 October.
A Commercial Appeals Service is intended to be introduced in October. It will operate as an expedited form of the written representations procedure which does not currently provide the opportunity for interested parties to submit representations during the appeal. Instead, representations made at the planning application stage will be forwarded, unless they have been withdrawn.
The DCLG said that the service will be closely modelled on the existing Householder Appeals Service. It will include advertisement consent and shop front appeals, but will not include change of use and floorspace threshold appeals as it would be "impossible" to determine at planning application stage whether such applications would raise complex planning issues.
The DCLG said that it would clarify the appeals procedures for advertisement appeals, including the power of the Planning Inspectorate to determine the appropriate appeals procedure for all advertisement appeals, from October 2013.
No changes to enforcement appeals procedures will be introduced as part of the review. The DCLG said that responses to such proposals had raised "significant issues" which justified the retention of the existing enforcement appeals procedures "at this time".
