Planning
LAWnewsUK Teams up with Planning Firm Mills-Reeve
3rd September - Mills & Reeve LLP specialists in planning law are kindly providing us with planning news from their blog. The first of these focusses on the little known Uthwatt Report - Thank you to partner, David Brock.
The State of the Planning System - the Uthwatt Report
I'm back from sabbatical today and as promised in my post of 1st June I'm blogging now to let you know what the Uthwatt Report said, having read it on sabbatical. You'll remember it was the report which led to the current planning system. I think it's important to know the reasons we have the system.
It was a fascinating read which revealed great boldness on the part of the Uthwatt Committee. The need for a proper positive planning system and a national lead for development was at the forefront of the Committee's mind. This was not just to deal with post-war reconstruction and the provision of housing but also for economic growth and health over the long term. It was that which justified the introduction of the new system and the nationalisation of development rights (we cannot develop without planning permission).
They also recognised that the removal of development rights which took place expropriated land value and so should be accompanied by compensation. I want to do some more research in due course to see what actually happened to the compensation fund they proposed (and it may be that readers of Plan-it Law can speed up my research). It seems to me that this is very relevant to how we operate the system today.
And Uthwatt also recommended a betterment levy, not dissimilar to Planning Gain Supplement in its rationale.
I have done a note about Uthwatt explaining and summarising their main recommendations which you can find here and I look forward to comments and feedback. For starters perhaps, what do we feel about the current Coalition's localism agenda against the need for new development for a healthy economy which was axiomatic to Uthwatt?
The excellent PDF can be found below:
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