ABSTRACT
The combination of changes to planning legislation in the 1960s and social attitudes towards authority effectively ensured that ‘the genie was out of the bottle’ in terms of public involvement in planning, but recent attempts have been made to curtail the growing desire to influence the outcome of future plans. Public involvement requires time, which the government regards as delay, and its attempt to speed up the production of plans, and, therefore, the Town and Country (Development Plan) Regulations 1991 (SI 1991/2794), no longer require local planning authorities to carry out two stages involving the public in the preparation of plans. The preliminary exercise, which requests comments and views on matters that the local planning authority proposes to include in the plan, is now left to the discretion of the authority. The government sees the principal stage for public involvement in the period following the placing of the plan on deposit for public inspection, and at that time providing an opportunity for making objections and representations. It remains to be seen how many authorities will adopt the new ‘streamlined approach’ given the level of expectation which has developed in the mind of the public. Those that do accept the advice are, in a sense, returning to the 1947 statutory right of objection, with one fundamental difference. The 1947 provisions ensured that an objection which was upheld by the minister would result in an amendment to the plan, whereas the present requirements are that the local planning authority should give consideration to the recommendation of the inspector before finally adopting the plan. It is, however, possible that the government may amend this provision as a result of the legal challenges which have been made to the actions by local authorities in dismissing the recommendations of the local plan inspector (see Chapter 5).
