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Advice given between between 1 October 2009 and 14 April 2015 has been archived.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 steps will the Planning Inspectorate take to ensure there is a proper and unencumbered consultation?
Advice given
Following a suite of non-statutory consultation events held in 2016, the Planning Inspectorate issued the following advice to the Applicant:
attachment 1
This advice was issued by the Inspectorate proactively, and was in part driven by communicated concerns analogous to those set out in your email.
All applications for development consent must be accompanied by a ‘Consultation Report’. The Consultation Report is prepared under section 37 of the Planning Act 2008 (the PA2008) and must give details of:
a) what has been done in compliance with sections 42, 47 and 48 of the PA2008 in relation to a proposed application that has become the application;
b) any relevant responses; and
c) the account taken of any relevant responses.
In the Acceptance period (ie the 28 days following the formal submission of an application) the Planning Inspectorate will scrutinise all of the application documents, including the evidence provided in the Consultation Report, applying the statutory tests set out in s55 of the PA2008.
By the end of the Acceptance period the Planning Inspectorate (on behalf of the Secretary of State) must decide, in accordance with the tests in s55 of the PA2008, whether or not to accept an application for examination. In reaching this decision, s55(4) makes explicit that the Planning Inspectorate must have regard to the Consultation Report and any adequacy of consultation representations made by local authority consultees.
