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Advice given between between 1 October 2009 and 14 April 2015 has been archived.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 fully appreciate that, under under s53 of the Planning Act 2008 (as amended) (the PA2008), the Planning Inspectorate will be assessing any application against whether "... (a) the proposed applicant is considering a distinct project of real substance genuinely requiring entry onto the land." That I am not questioning.
Surely the Planning Inspectorate must also be considering the suitability and the credibility of the applicant, as well as whether it can meet the 'project of real substance' test? I would suggest that the Planning Inspectorate should be carefully assessing the suitability and credibility of any applicant, both for an S53 access application and, in this case, any possible later application for a Development Consent Order.
Given the evidence in my email of 13th April, I am suggesting that the Planning Inspectorate must scrutinize and carefully question the suitability and credibility of RiverOak Strategic Partners should you receive from it any applications for S53 access or for a Development Consent Order.
Advice given
All applications for authorisation to enter land under s53 of the Planning Act 2008 (the PA2008) will be considered and decided against the statutory tests.
Any subsequent application for a Development Consent Order will be considered for acceptance against the statutory tests in s55 of the PA2008. The Infrastructure Planning (Applications: Prescribed Forms and Procedure) Regulation 2009 require applicants to submit a Funding Statement, if the proposed Development Consent Order would authorise the Compulsory Acquisition of land, indicating how the Compulsory Acquisition is proposed to be funded. Concurrently, the Department for Communities and Local Governments’ ‘Planning Act 2008: Guidance related to procedures for the compulsory acquisition of land’ states that the Funding Statement should “demonstrate that adequate funding is likely to be available to enable the Compulsory Acquisition within the statutory period following the order being made, and that the resource implications of a possible acquisition resulting from a blight notice have been taken account of.”
If an application for a Development Consent Order is accepted for examination matters of funding may be examined by the appointed Examining Authority.
