News and Resources

What a mess in South Oxfordshire, with the council now on a collision course with MHCLG over its submitted local plan, which it would dearly love to withdraw. One of the last things that the previous Conservative administration at South Oxfordshire District Council did before purdah kicked in ahead of the May 2019 local elections …

Mike Best at Turley made the point most concisely in a tweet this week: Two themes to this blog post: ⁃ the, partly inconsistent, changes to the planning system announced over the last week; ⁃ the difficulty of sieving out from this a lot more media chaff. The pre Conservative party conference briefings in relation …

There appears to be a new domestic political urgency about climate change (to the extent that there is space for anything other than the B word). After saying as little as possible about the politics, the focus of this blog post is on law, and specifically, climate change litigation, although as can be the case …

Lindblom LJ gave a short speech this week at drinks hosted by Cornerstone Barristers to mark the publication of Ashley Bowes’ A Practical Approach To Planning Law 14th edition. He made a nice joke about how many of the footnote references were to articles by one Dr Ashley Bowes. No doubt Lindblom LJ’s judgment in …

I wanted to gather together for myself the steps that the Government has recently been taking, by way of funding commitments or planning interventions, in the face of the problems being faced by so many town centres. After all, the position is dire, with multiple threats: economic, social and technological. See for instance this Guardian …

This tweet from MHCLG has been nagging away at me for a few days: The announcement of course was in relation to the 1 September 2019 commencement date in the Community Infrastructure Levy (Amendment) (England) (No. 2) Regulations 2019 and the Government’s updated planning practice guidance in relation to CIL , planning obligations and viability. …

There was an interesting piece this week by Sarah Townsend on the Planning Resource website: Why planning enforcement notices have dropped to their lowest-ever level (subscription only, 29 August 2019). There was also an interesting ruling from the High Court, London Borough of Tower Hamlets v Secretary of State and Angelic Interiors Limited (in administration) …

Your planning law question for today is: Where the General Permitted Development Order 2015 provides that you have deemed planning permission for a category of development within Schedule 2 of the Order, subject to your applying to the local planning authority for a determination as to whether its prior approval is required as to specified …

Keith Hill, then housing and planning minister, once described the process to Royal Assent of what became the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 as “the gestation of an elephant”. It took 17 months. Given that the average gestation period for an Asian elephant is 18 to 22 months he wasn’t far off. However, he …

I’m on holiday and it’s hot. There was going to be no blog post this week. But the hotel room world news channels were covering the latest IPCC report, published on Thursday, and I realised I needed to join some dots for myself on climate change. So here is another blog post after all, before …