Addressing your HoT conditions - Planning requirements
Ed Waters
Once your Heads of Terms have been signed, you have achieved a significant milestone on your Towns Fund journey.
However, you need to be mindful that your Heads of Terms may be subject to conditions set out in your Town Deal Offer which may relate to obtaining the requisite planning approvals, including Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) (and Habitats Regulations Assessment (HRA)) to enable your projects to be delivered.
As you confirm and develop your projects, you should begin to think about the actions required to address any TIP conditions, and how to communicate these requirements to your Town Deal Board.
It is worth noting that requirements around planning, EIA and HRA apply to any development projects and are not specific to Towns Fund. It is likely that there is a wealth of knowledge to draw on within your local planning authority (LPA) to help you better understand the intricacies of these requirements.
What permissions are required?
For the majority of projects, planning permission is likely to be required. There are, however, instances where the project can go ahead without the need to obtain planning permission from the LPA. Permitted development rights can be used to carry out certain development. These rights were updated last year, which are outlined in our blog.
If your project cannot benefit from permitted development rights, you will need to secure planning permission prior to starting construction work.
It is important to determine early on whether your project is subject to an EIA or HRA, since there are specific requirements for preparing these types of application that will affect the delivery programme. Where ecological surveys are required, some species can only be surveyed at certain times of year. The presence of some species may require a full year of surveys to be carried out before an application can be submitted to the LPA.
It is important to note that surveys may be a requirement of any planning application, and we therefore suggest that you speak to your LPA at an early stage to better understand the information requirements for any planning application.
In our recently published guide Road to Delivery: Planning & EIA requirements, you will find further detail on each of the routes available to securing planning permission for your projects.
Who is responsible?
If your project does require planning permission, it is important to understand who will be responsible for securing consent. Will you or one of your partners seek planning permission? Or will you rely on other organisations (including the private sector) bringing forward the development and obtaining the relevant planning permission themselves?
There are pros and cons of each approach. Seeking planning permission yourself will provide you with greater autonomy over the proposals and allow you to drive any discussions with the LPA. However, this leaves the risk of securing the ‘right’ consent with you. Also, as noted in the Addressing your Planning, EIA and HRA needs in your business case guide, planning applications can require the preparation of specialist documents, and you may need to bring in specialist resources to enable you to suitably prepare the application.
What engagement is required?
Consultation with the public and technical stakeholders is a key part of obtaining planning permission. During the determination of a planning application, the LPA will advertise the plans to local residents to allow them an opportunity to comment on the proposals and notify relevant technical consultees.
If you decide to lead on the preparation of the planning application, you should consider what additional pre-application consultation you will undertake. Each LPA produces a Statement of Community Involvement which will help you understand their expectations.
Our recently published guide on Stakeholder Engagement in Stage 2 provides further guidance on this topic.
If you would like to discuss your planning, EIA or HRA requirements in further detail with one of our topic experts, please request a meeting using our Expert Drop-in Hour service or talk to your Town Coordinator about organising a meeting.