The government has introduced the Neighbourhood Planning Bill to parliament.
The Bill, announced as part of the Queen’s Speech in May, aims to speed up the delivery of more homes and strengthen the neighbourhood planning process.
Under the Bill, measures will be taken to ensure that local planning authorities can only impose pre-commencement planning conditions “where strictly necessary, but in a way that ensures important heritage and environmental safeguards remain in place,” the government said.
A second proposal for planning conditions grants the secretary of state power to make regulations that explain the type of conditions that may or may not be imposed on a planning permission.
With the neighbourhood planning process, the Bill will simplify how plans can be revised as local circumstances change, and ensure that plans come into force more quickly once approved by local people.
The Bill also seeks to simplify the compulsory purchase order process “to make it clearer, fairer and faster”.
Housing and planning minister Gavin Barwell said: “We have already built more than 900,000 homes since 2010 and now this Bill will help speed up delivery of the further new homes our country needs and ensure our foot is still firmly on the pedal.
“We’re also going further than ever before to speed up neighbourhood planning which puts power in the hands of local people to decide where development gets built.”
The Bill was originally named the Neighbourhood Planning and Infrastructure Bill, but the infrastructure elements – placing the Infrastructure Commission on a statutory basis and privatising the Land Registry – are being reviewed by the newly established Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with a decision on whether to proceed with either proposal to be made later this year.
