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Advice given between between 1 October 2009 and 14 April 2015 has been archived.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
What information do DfT (The Planning Inspectorate) hold on RiverOak and what due diligence do DfT (The Planning Inspectorate) undertake on applicants at the Pre-Application stage?
Advice given
The Inspectorate do not hold any undisclosed information about this company or its financial dealings. There is no legal requirement for an applicant to share such information with The Inspectorate at the Pre-Application stage. However, where an application involves any compulsory acquisition of land, which RiverOak would do as part of their proposals for Manston Airport, the applicant would need to submit a Funding Statement with the application documents.
A Funding Statement should provide as much information as possible about the resource implications of both acquiring the land and implementing the project for which the land is required. Applicants should be able to demonstrate that adequate funding is likely to be available to enable them to carry out the compulsory acquisition within a statutory period following a Development Consent Order being made, and that the resource implications of a possible acquisition resulting from a blight notice has also been taken into account. Unless an Examining Authority is satisfied that funding will be available both for the carrying out of the project within the statutory period and for the payment of compensation claims the compelling case in the public interest test required by section 122(3) of the Planning Act will not be met and the compulsory acquisition powers cannot be granted.
Where we have received hard copy letters in respect of this project they have come from RiverOak’s legal advisors or consultant team. It is not unusual on projects like this for the bulk of the correspondence to be undertaken by advisors or consultants on behalf of the applicant.
In terms of payment of fees, there is no due diligence that the Planning Inspectorate is required to undertake. It is the payment and clearing of a fee in respect of a named case that triggers the required actions to be undertaken by The Inspectorate, for example on submission of the application and the application fee, the Planning Inspectorate has 28 days to determine whether an application will be accepted to progress to the next stage.
