New legislation aimed at smoothing the planning process for building major infrastructure could see the need to consult with locals dropped.
The government has vowed to “get the nation building” and has identified the antiquated and convoluted planning process as one of the major barriers that prevents work from being started.
Under the proposals, Labour hopes to drop the need to consult with affected locals at an early stage of a planning process, according to a newly released document.
Under current laws, the government is obligated to consult with those who could be in line for compensation from large building schemes, known as “category three” people.
It said: “People who may be impacted by a project will continue to be made aware through wider community consultation and notices, and the requirement to ‘notify’ them once the application is accepted under section 56 of the Planning Act will remain.
“While this will still mean applicants need to identify ‘category three’ persons ahead of submitting an application, and notify them on acceptance, applicants will only need to undertake this work once the final scope of the development is known.
“This will reduce the need to identify people at the early stages of a project where an applicant is consulting on options which may lead to identifying and consulting significantly more people than the final proposal; avoid the need to keep detailed lists of large numbers of people up to date over the entire pre-application period; and reduce the number of people who will be consulted but not impacted by the final proposal.
“Those individuals will then still be able to engage in pre-application community consultation and examination of the project, and the procedure for claiming compensation where appropriate would remain unchanged.”
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government also wants to make it easier for solar panel farms to be built by streamlining the planning process and reducing the amount of information required from builders.
It added: “Solar farms tend to be single site developments which are relatively compact, they follow a standard design, and raise a relatively limited number of issues.”
“These often relate to landscape and visual impacts, loss of agricultural land, and require no compulsory acquisition… We know the volume of solar schemes is likely to grow rapidly to support the transition to clean power by 2030.
“A more flexible regime might streamline the process for examining and determining such projects including granting greater discretion to the Examining Authority to streamline or combine written and relevant representations as part of an examination.”
The reforms are just some of the measures likely to be announced by Rachel Reeves on Wednesday as she unveils plans to overhaul the planning process.
It has already been announced that it will be made easier to build homes on greenbelt surrounding out of town train stations.
Environmental groups will also be stripped of the ability to object spuriously to plans.
