Background and Summary
3.There are three main areas that the Act covers: promoting growth and facilitating provision of infrastructure, and related matters; other infrastructure provisions; economic measures.
4.The main elements of the Act that cover promoting growth and facilitating provision of infrastructure, and related matters, are:
the option to make planning applications directly to the Secretary of State, when a local planning authority has been designated on the basis of not performing adequately in determining planning applications, which will (for example) enable applicants to avoid delays in local decision-making;
broadening the powers of the Secretary of State to award costs between the parties at planning appeals;
limits on the powers that local planning authorities have to require information with planning applications;
allowing for the reconsideration of economically unviable affordable housing requirements contained in agreements under section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990;
enabling the relaxation of the requirements in regulations made under section 109 of the Communications Act 2003 for installation of electronic communications apparatus; and
excluding the right to apply for land proposed for development to be registered as a town or village green to safeguard against the system being used to stall or stop development, while protecting existing registered greens.
5.The main elements of the Act that cover other infrastructure provisions are:
speeding up processes for holders of consents under section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989, by allowing them to be varied by the authorities that granted them so as to take account of, for example, changes in technology and design;
clarifying the position of variations and replacements of pre-Planning Act consents under the Planning Act 2008 and associated saving provisions;
modifying special parliamentary procedure to ensure that the procedure will consider orders under the Planning Act 2008 and other Acts only to the extent that these authorise compulsory acquisition of land falling into a special category;
enabling the Secretary of State to direct that business and commercial projects of national significance can be considered under the nationally significant infrastructure regime contained in the Planning Act 2008, to enable these applications to proceed faster than they currently do; and
enabling the Mayor of London to delegate decisions concerning planning applications of potential strategic importance.
6.Some of the above elements of the Act take forward recommendations from the “Penfold Review of non-planning consents” undertaken by Adrian Penfold in 2010 into consents which have to be obtained alongside or after, and separate from, planning permission in order to complete and operate a development (“non-planning consents”), specifically: elements of the Town and Village Green provisions; the repeal of section 14 of the Energy Act 1976; and the rights of way and Highways provisions.
7.The main elements of the Act that cover economic measures are:
postponing the date on which new non-domestic rating lists (which relate to business rates) in England should be compiled from 1st April 2015 to 1st April 2017, in order to give businesses stability;
creating a new employment status of employee shareholder with different employment rights compared to employees and workers. Employee shareholders will receive shares of a value of at least £2,000 in the employer company or employer’s parent company.
8.Further background is included on these and other elements of the Act in the "Overview of the Structure" section.
