‘We need to put what we do in my dad’s language, in pounds, shillings and pence’: Commercialisation and the reshaping of public-sector planning in England

This article furthers understanding of how commercial imperatives are reshaping dominant conceptions of planning practice in England, and by extension the production of the built environment more widely. We make an original contribution by tracing the emergence of the logic of commercialisation in England, demonstrating how the impacts of austerity and ‘market-led viability planning’ have entrenched the ‘delivery state’, a powerful disciplinary matrix representing late-neoliberal governance. Through in-depth, ethnographic study of a local planning authority, we argue that commercialisation within the delivery state creates a distinct ‘economy of attention’, reshaping planners’ agency and professional identities, and the substance and scope of their work. The conclusion draws out wider implications of commercialisation for planning in and beyond the delivery state.

A REVISIT ON THE APPEALS HEARD BY THE SELANGOR APPEAL BOARD: IS JUSTICE HEARD A JUSTICE SERVED?

This study tries to review the roles and functions of the Selangor Appeal Board in disposing of appeal cases registered at the tribunal. It is imperative to ascertain that the right of appeal provided under the Town Country and Planning Act 1976 (TCPA 1976) is carried out in order to serve justice to the aggrieved parties whose application for planning orders have been rejected by the Planning Authority at the local level. The decision of the Appeal Board is final and can only be brought to the High Court for judicial review. Thus, the tribunal should be independent and fair in disposing of any appeal. The study employs a combination of doctrinal and empirical research. In the doctrinal analysis, the study analyses the primary and secondary data that include the TCPA 1976 and analysing the statistics of appeal cases from 1991 until 2019. Interviews were carried out in order to examine the law in reality. Accordingly, it can reflect the impartiality of the tribunal in the disposal of the appeals. In brief, the Selangor Appeal Board has proven its ability to hear appeals according to the rule of law since in recent years lesser appeals have been filed that indicate fewer grievances of the public against the decision of the local planning authority.

Granice władztwa planistycznego przy uchwalaniu miejscowego planu zagospodarowania przestrzennego

The considerations of the article focus on the planning power exercised by a municipality as a unilateral and authoritative determination of the purpose of the land and its development. The municipality in the capacity of a planning au­thority cannot assume an absolute and unlimited power and must act within the limits determined by applicable and binding laws. Hence, in the implementation of its land development tasks, the municipality (or local authorities) are bound by the provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland and other relevant laws that govern the planning authority granted to municipalities. Exceeding the limits of this planning power will occur when planning solutions prove to be arbitrary and lack substantive justification. Defective legal solutions include not only solutions that violate the law, but also those that result from a potential abuse of the competence of the municipality. Determining the land purpose and the manner of its management must reflect a reasonable and real need for the solution adopted. When the latter is detached from the legal and factual status of the land in question, a violation of planning power arises. When a municipality adopts a local plan which introduces certain restrictions in the use of the property right that is protected in the Constitution, it is obliged to apply legal measures that will be the least onerous for individual entities and which will remain in a rational proportion to the intended purposes. However, certain situations that will lead to the conflict of interests are unavoidable. Settling these conflicts in the process of law-making requires, each time, the weighing off the interests of individual property owners and the public interest of the whole local community. Individual owners may sue the municipal planning authority on the grounds of the abuse of its planning power when adopting a local land management plan and such legal actions may be effective.

Applications for Planning Permission 1: Pre-Submission Requirements

Until fairly recently there was no standard form prescribed for the making of an application for planning permission. Each local planning authority could provide its own form for doing so. This led to a variation in the amount of information required by each authority, and was a concern for large-scale developers, such as volume house builders, where development projects could involve applications being made to many different local planning authorities.

Applications for Planning Permission 2: Procedure on Receipt of Applications by the Local Planning Authority

An application for planning permission is made to the authority with responsibility for determining the application. In the case of a non-metropolitan area with a two-tier division of planning responsibility, most applications fall to be determined by the district planning authority for the area in which the land is situated. If the application relates to a county matter, application must be made to the county planning authority for the area. In those areas where the local planning authority is a unitary authority, all applications are made to the unitary authority for the area. Section 1 of the Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013 has also provided applicants with the option of applying to the Secretary of State if a council has been designated as not performing adequately in determining applications.

The Need for Planning Permission 2: Cases of Doubt

Given the complexities of the definition of development and the difficulties which may arise in deciding whether in any particular case proposed development is permitted development, landowners may be in doubt about whether they need to make an express application for planning permission to the local planning authority before carrying out some activity. In most circumstances there is an opportunity to put the matter beyond doubt.

The Need for Planning Permission 1: General Permitted Development Order; Local Development Orders

Section 57(1) of the 1990 Act provides that, subject to the provisions of the section, planning permission is required for the carrying out of any development of land. Planning permission may be granted in three main ways, namely by development order without the need for any application to be made, by a deemed grant of planning permission, or as the result of an express application for planning permission made to the local planning authority.

Definition of Development 1: Operational Development

Section 57(1) of the 1990 Act provides that, subject to the following provisions of that section, ‘planning permission is required for the carrying out of any development of land’. This planning permission may be granted following the determination of an express application for permission made to the local planning authority for the area in which the land is situated. In other cases, however, it is not necessary for an express application to be made. This is because planning permission for the development in question may have been granted by a development order, which may be a special, local, neighbourhood, or general order (such development is generally known as ‘permitted’ development), or by some other specific statutory provision (as in the case of enterprise zones or simplified planning zones), or be deemed to have been granted under other provisions of the Act (as in the case of the display of certain advertisements), or authorized by some private Act of Parliament.