legislation (EC, 2000). The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) is responsible for
national spatial policy. There is no national spatial plan; the policy is specified in policy
circulars and in national and regional guidelines (Planning Policy Guidance Notes, PPGs) and
various direct decisions. These either determine the actions of lower government authorities
or they are treated as suggestions for the implementation of local responsibilities. The ODPM
has a strong influence on local spatial policy through its power of oversight of local plans.
Formal decisions on local policy and permits are made by the council of the local authority
(all the elected members) but are usually delegated to a committee of the council. Local plans
are not legally binding. Each action of (re) development in the physical environment requires
a planning permit and building regulation approval; both fall under the jurisdiction of the
local planning authorities. The planning permission covers an array of aspects that are
relevant to planning (function, access, integration, and so forth), while the building regulation
approval considers structural and safety features. Only the issuing of a planning permit and
the building regulation approval establish legally binding rights and obligations. This British
system is generally known as a development control system, one in which the legal basis is
not formed by a plan, although it must be taken into account in taking a planning decision
(material consideration). Before the Planning Reform England came into force, the
development plan was drawn up at the local level. This plan was prepared by the relevant
local authorities and comprised primarily two types of document: structure plans covering
counties and local plans covering districts. In the metropolitan areas of England, these were
replaced by a single unitary development plan. Development plans had to be in conformity
with national and regional guidance (EC, 2000; Spaans, 2002).
The former British planning system was typified by the land-use management approach in
which planning is more closely associated with the narrower task of controlling the change of
land use at the strategic and local levels.
7.2 The English planning system after the Planning Reform
The Planning Green Paper [Planning: Delivering a Fundamental Change] marked the start of
the change of the English planning system (ODPM, 2001). Mobbs (2000), however, points
out that many of the proposals in the Planning Reform paper arose from the Deregulation
Task Force: a body established under the Conservatives. The result, published in 1999, was
the Modernising Government document. The changes proposed to make the planning system
more ‘efficient’ were specifically targeted, with two major objectives:
- To speed up the decision-making process, which for the average person objecting to
proposals is already weighted in favour of the developer; and
- To develop a regional agenda, whereby many decisions that would previously have been
taken in public by local councillors are taken remotely by appointees to regional planning
and development boards.
Other important objectives concerned the closer engagement of the community in the process
of plan preparation and the improvement of the integration with other local strategies and
plans.
The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, which comprises the legislation and the
prescriptions for the changes, came into force at the end of September 2004. The regulations
implementing the parts of the Act reforming development plans came into force shortly
afterwards. An example of these is the Town and Country Planning (Regional Planning)
(England) Regulations 2004, which provides a guideline for the steps to be followed in a
Regional Spatial Strategy. In principle, the system involves a simplification of the complex
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