The Hobbs Parker Blogs

In the latest of the Coalition Government’s reforms to the planning system Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles has announced today that Regional Planning Strategies are to be revoked with immediate effect.

The Regional Planning Strategies (of which ‘The South East Plan’ was the adopted Regional Plan for the South East of England) were brought in by the previous Government and set regional targets to build 3 million homes nationally by 2020, however the new Government claims that these centrally imposed building targets have failed to increase house building and that much of the country is facing the lowest peacetime house building rates since 1924.

Today’s announcement on the Communities and Local Government website states that:

“From today, power will be handed back to councils and communities to make their own decisions on planning that can get the country building again. Communities will, once again, be able to solve local housing challenges in a way that makes sense for them. In return councils will be offered powerful new incentives that ensure they benefit from the development they welcome”.

Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles said:

“Communities will no longer have to endure the previous government’s failed Soviet tractor style top-down planning targets – they were a terrible, expensive, time-consuming way to impose house building and worst of all threatened the destruction of the Green Belt”.

This latest reform to the planning system and the scrapping of the South East Plan, should be an opportunity for communities to have a greater say in the decision making for new development at the local level and there could be new opportunities for land owners in Kent.

Hobbs Parker are able to advise clients on how this reform may affect local planning decision making in the future, and will be keeping up to date with any further reforms to the planning system.

For more information please contact David Jarman

david.jarman@hobbsparker.co.uk

Posted by David Jarman