Today's entry is soliciting ideas for extending the Planning
Act regime.
On 6 September the government announced that it was considering
making amendments to the Planning Act regime to bring new types of
development within it (specifically 'new categories of
commercial and business development') and to review the
existing thresholds.
I invite blog readers to make suggestions for new types of
infrastructure and other development that might be included.
I suggest that the starting point should be whether
development is 'nationally significant' in the ordinary
meaning of the phrase. Having said that, I think that the
one-stop shop regime of the Planning Act could also be extended to
projects that would otherwise be too complex to get off the ground,
such as tricky regeneration projects, where perhaps national
significance isn't so applicable. It may well also be
that the current compulsion for projects to use the regime would
not be appropriate for
