Planning Competency T061

Planning is one of the technical competencies you can opt to pick for your APC submission. Depending on your property course this is a module you may also cover.

Planning Legislation

The key Legislation for this competency is as follows:

Town and Country Planning Acts 1947 and 1990 – Section 106 stems from this act
Local Government and Planning and Land Act 1990
Town & Country Planning (Use Classes Order) 1987 as amended – Link to list of use classes
Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990
Planning and compulsory purchase Act 2004
Planning Act 2008
Localism Act 2011 – Idea of the ‘Big society’ Giving more power to Local Authorities strengthening enforcement powers

Make sure you are aware of the general objective of each and purpose of each Act. In addition to current and past Acts, it is important to be aware of any additional bills or legislation likely to be adopted in the future, for instance.

Structure and Framework

The system is generally structured as follows:

Core strategy
Local Development framework
National Planning Policy framework – This reduced 1000s of pages of guidance to 50pages
Localism

The UK planning system has traditionally been top-down, recent changes to policy such as the Localism Act have encouraged more bottom-up thinking.

Planning and Development

What is Development? This is defined as a Material change in the use of land and buildings. In most cases, this would include activities such as demolition, change of business or site use. Therefore, for development to take place permission is required via a Planning Application.

There are two types of Planning applications – Full and Outline Consent

Outline – You must start within 2 years, Establish the principle of what you want to achieve
Full – Start within 3 years

CIL – Community Infrastructure Levy

Aims to replace Section 106, a tariff is applied based on the size of the development. The money generated by this tariff is to fund local community projects and infrastructure.

Permitted development allows a change of use from various different classes without consent.

However, this had an inverse impact in many areas across the country, e.g. in many London areas. For instance, this resulted in the loss of office space as many owners opted to convert to office space to Residential. TAs a result, adding to the oversupply in the residential market, and loss of business in Town Centres.

In Conclusion, planning is one of the area in Property with the most frequent changes. Be sure to be able to discuss the basic framework and legislation. Some useful links have been included below for additional reading.