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Advice given between between 1 October 2009 and 14 April 2015 has been archived.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
The enquirer queried whether Section 172 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 and Schedule 4 Paragraph 10 of the Electricity Act 1989 could be used to gain access to land in the course of preparing a Development Consent Order application.
Advice given
The Planning Inspectorate has a duty, under s51 of the Planning Act 2008, to provide advice about applying for a Development Consent Order (DCO) and making representations about an application, or a proposed application, for such an order. Those seeking to apply for a DCO or those seeking to make a representation in relation to a DCO application should have regard to our advice contained within our suite of Advice Notes accessible on our website: attachment 1. In response to your specific question about whether an applicant seeking development consent can use s172 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 (as amended by the Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017) instead of s53 of the Planning Act 2008 to gain access to land, the Planning Inspectorate’s advice regarding this matter is addressed in Section 6 of the ‘Section 53: Rights of entry FAQs’ on the National Infrastructure Planning website: attachment 2. The Planning Inspectorate cannot provide legal advice, therefore any questions you raise that require interpretation beyond the advice contained in our FAQ advice should be appropriately directed to those that are able to do so.
