The list below is a record of advice the Planning Inspectorate has provided in respect of the Planning Act 2008 process.
There is a statutory duty under section 51 of the Planning Act 2008 to record the advice that is given in relation to an application or a potential application and to make this publicly available. Advice we have provided is recorded below together with the name of the person or organisation who asked for the advice and the project it relates to. The privacy of any other personal information will be protected in accordance with our Information Charter which you should view before sending information to the Planning Inspectorate.
Note that after a project page has been created for a particular application, any advice provided that relates to it will also be published under the ‘s51 advice’ tab on the relevant project page.
Advice given between between 1 October 2009 and 14 April 2015 has been archived. View the archived advice.
Enquiry
I live in [REDACTED] where Europe's largest Solar Farm Proposal (Botley West Solar Farm 1,350 MWp has just launched its statutory NSIP consultation. I have read the booklet that was delivered to households in the area. And I have consulted the documents placed in local public libraries and materials on the Botley West Website. I see from the PINS website that you have rules that govern the accessibility of documents to the general public: their reading level, HTML formatting and navigational tools. Do these guidlelines apply also to developers when they produce materials for public consultation? Might you have a template for guidance to developers when they submit materials? Or are there existing models or modelling of NSIP consultation documents written in plain English to which you can direct me.
Advice given
The Planning Inspectorate’s Advice Note 6 sets out best practice in terms of application document presentation (including matters of accessibility), however this relates to the presentation of Development Consent Order (DCO) application documents rather than a developer's pre-application consultation material. Developers are often referred to Planning Inspectorate’s Advice Notes and other published best practice during the pre-application stage, however ultimately the Planning Inspectorate cannot be prescriptive in terms of how developers administer their pre-application activities, including consultation exercises. If you have comments about the accessibility of the Developer's pre-application consultation documents, or any other matters regarding the adequacy of the Developer's pre-application consultation, at this stage you should direct them to the Developer in the first instance. The contact details we hold are as follows: Email: [email protected] Telephone: 0808 175 3085 If you have already contacted the Developer with your comments and you are not satisfied that the Developer has, or will, take account of them, then you may wish to submit your comments to the relevant local authority. The Planning Inspectorate will request the relevant local authorities’ views on the adequacy of the Developer’s consultation when the application is submitted, and local authorities can consider the concerns of the local community as part of their adequacy of consultation representation.
