Compensation under the Town and Country Planning Acts: revocation, modification and discontinuance orders, etc.

Until 1991, the law on this subject was in its essentials a direct survival from the immediate post-war period when the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was passed. The Planning and Compensation Act 1991 swept away most of the postwar system of compensation for planning restrictions – one of the two pillars of the “compensation/betterment” question – except for cases of revocation and discontinuance (which occur but rarely in practice). There is now no trace remaining of the concept which emerged with the Uthwatt Report during the Second World War, namely that some kind of national balance should be achieved between (i) the proportion of prospective development value which should be transferred to the state and not left to landowners in the event of a grant of planning permission, and (ii) the proportion of that value which should be conceded to landowners as compensation in the event of a refusal of planning permission.