Planning Law

[simmo]

On the extremely small chance that there is someone on here who has some knowledge of planning law, here's a question.

Would it be legal for a pre-agreement to grant planning permission for a business project to be made in exchange for other work which a council needed carrying out being done?

To be specific - work has started on the restoration of a local coalmine. The company will extract 1/17th of the amount of coal which was being extracted when Scottish Coal went bust and carry out restoration over a period of 2 years.

Nothing else is attached to that deal (publicly) - so essentially Hargreaves, out of the goodness of their hearts have given millions upon millions of pounds to South Lanarkshire Council - on whom the duty of restoration would have fallen had a benefactor not been found.

Planning permission has been sought for a ream of huge ******* turbines on the site and Hargreaves are a company with a great deal of landfill interests - who've just volunteered to fill in an enourmous hole.

I smell a rat.

But is it a legal rat or not?

 

[Grey]

I don't know anything about planning procedures in Scotland but I presume a few of the general principles I learned from my planning degree in Ireland would apply. I should add that apart from a year or two of sporadic short term jobs following graduation I never practiced as a planner. A 1980s freeze on public sector recruitment and turf wars between engineers, architects and plannners saw to that.

The council and the owners may have come to a private 'understanding', but no planning permission can be granted until a formal application is lodged and dealt with according to the procedures set out in law. The council will be obliged to give the same consideration and apply the same rigour to this application as to any other. Even if the council have indicated that they will deal sympathetically with any such application there is always the opportunity for third parties to appeal their decision.

Therefore the council would not be in a position to guarantee to anyone that they will get planning permission, especially not without seeing the details of the proposal and knowing the position of other environmental authorities which might have a say. On the other hand, they could say to a landowner that the planning department considers, broadly speaking, that their intentions are compatible with the local development plan and the type of use foreseen for the land.

But don't take this as gospel, for all I know there are special fast-tracking procedures in Scotland for certain types of projects on derelict land.

 

[simmo]

I don't know anything about planning procedures in Scotland but I presume a few of the general principles I learned from my planning degree in Ireland would apply. I should add that apart from a year or two of sporadic short term jobs following graduation I never practiced as a planner. A 1980s freeze on public sector recruitment and turf wars between engineers, architects and plannners saw to that.

The council and the owners may have come to a private 'understanding', but no planning permission can be granted until a formal application is lodged and dealt with according to the procedures set out in law. The council will be obliged to give the same consideration and apply the same rigour to this application as to any other. Even if the council have indicated that they will deal sympathetically with any such application there is always the opportunity for third parties to appeal their decision.

Therefore the council would not be in a position to guarantee to anyone that they will get planning permission, especially not without seeing the details of the proposal and knowing the position of other environmental authorities which might have a say. On the other hand, they could say to a landowner that the planning department considers, broadly speaking, that their intentions are compatible with the local development plan and the type of use foreseen for the land.

But don't take this as gospel, for all I know there are special fast-tracking procedures in Scotland for certain types of projects on derelict land.

Mmm. That sounds about right, except that third parties have no right of appeal.

And we are talking about a council who have recently given permission to developments which gathered 18,000 and 11,000 objections respectively.

The objections were quite sound and there were sufficient grounds to oppose the developments in support of public opinion - which shows what they think of public opinion.

 

[Grey]

That sounds about right, except that third parties have no right of appeal.

That is a major difference from the Irish system. However it seems there is a possibility of getting decisions referred to the national level in certain circumstances:

Planning authorities are required to notify the Scottish Ministers when they propose to grant permission for a development in which the planning authority has a financial interest or an interest in the land if the development does not accord with the adopted or approved local plan or has been the subject of a substantial body of objections. The Scottish Ministers consider whether they require to intervene. In the last 3 years a total of 319 such cases were notified, of which 21 were called in by Ministers.

Source: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2004/04/19206/35617

 

[Grasshopper]

On the extremely small chance that there is someone on here who has some knowledge of planning law, here's a question.

Would it be legal for a pre-agreement to grant planning permission for a business project to be made in exchange for other work which a council needed carrying out being done?

To be specific - work has started on the restoration of a local coalmine. The company will extract 1/17th of the amount of coal which was being extracted when Scottish Coal went bust and carry out restoration over a period of 2 years.

Nothing else is attached to that deal (publicly) - so essentially Hargreaves, out of the goodness of their hearts have given millions upon millions of pounds to South Lanarkshire Council - on whom the duty of restoration would have fallen had a benefactor not been found.

Planning permission has been sought for a ream of huge ******* turbines on the site and Hargreaves are a company with a great deal of landfill interests - who've just volunteered to fill in an enourmous hole.

I smell a rat.

But is it a legal rat or not?

You worry too much, Simmo.

Most of South Lanarkshire already looks like landfill.

 

[simmo]

You worry too much, Simmo.

Most of South Lanarkshire already looks like landfill.

Funnily enough - this is already the view of Mr Salmond and is why South Lanarkshire already has the largest concentration of wind turbines in Britain.

my main concern is the ******* noise that the bastards are making whilst carrying out their exceedingly generous restoration - and to give an indication of how generous see below.

Scottish Coal were losing £40m a year on circa £200m revenue. The mine in question probably accounted for roughly 1/4 of all costs & revenues. The proposed restoration will cost roughly half the previous costs annually (over 2 years). Even if we err on the side of caution and call it 1/3 of the costs - that is still £20m a year in costs.

Only they won't be getting £50m revenue as they only intend to take out 1/17th of the coal that was previously being extracted - so that's roughly £3m a year revenue.

So their gift to South Lanarkshire amounts to around £34m.

One would think that if this was all above board such a generous gift from a private company to the people of Scotland would be headline news.

It stinks worse than the fish-ridden fingernails of the harbourside crones on the Champion Hurdle thread!