This week I met up with the Planning Enforcement team manager, Emma Turner. We talked about lots of things, but two particular items I thought would interest quite a few people. (I took a photo of part of their performance point.)

1. Improving how planning conditions are used. 

2. Increasing their proaction on monitoring adherence to planning conditions.

Emma and her team are working on standardising the wording of conditions that get applied to planning permissions. This is to help prevent unenforceable conditions being added with little consideration of exactly what’s being required. In the heat of a planning committee meeting, it’s understandable that members feel they need to come up with conditions to make the scheme supportable. But too often the conditions that get attached like this aren’t well thought through and can eventually be unenforceable. 

They’re also preparing to group conditions into a helpful order on the planning decision notice, so that it’s clearer to developers which conditions need to be completed before development begins, before first occupation or other milestones. This is all to help developers and the public to understand the details of conditions on planning permissions. 

The other main thing is to increase their ability to be proactive. Until recently theirs has been a reactive service, primarily responding when potential planning breaches are reported to them. Now they are making plans to proactively monitor some of the larger permissions. This is a good step forward that I know the public will welcome. 

If you would like to have Emma come to speak to your parish council about the work they do in planning enforcement, contact me. I told her I could probably arrange some speaking gigs. 🙂