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Planning permission - amendments |
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Some LAs have latched onto obiter comments by Lord Hobhouse to say
that any deviations from approved plans will require new planning
permissions (as opposed to being dealt with by way of minor
amendments). But, that interpretation seems fundamentally flawed.
The quote by Lord Hobhouse that has caused these problems was made
in Sage [2003]. That case involved a dwelling house erected without
planning permission, with the construction taking place over a long
period of time. The construction work was not finished and it remained
unfit for habitation (eg no stairs, no windows). No works had been done
for over four years, but the LA served an enforcement notice (which was,
of course, subject to the four-year time limit). The defence argued that
the enforcement notice was time-barred since no works had been carried
out for four years and the building was ‘substantially completed’ in that
all the works for which planning permission was required had already been completed. The HL disagreed and said the four-year period only ran
from the time when the whole operation (ie the erection of the whole
dwelling house and its constituent parts) were substantially completed.
That much is straightforward and undisputed. The problem is that Lord
Hobhouse then said that ‘if the building operation is not carried out, both
externally and internally, fully in accordance with the permission the
whole operation is unlawful’.
That quotation has been seized on by some LAs as justification for the
argument that any deviation – however insignificant – from the approved
plans will require a new planning application and cannot be treated as a
minor amendment. The fact of the matter is that these comments were
obiter (the case was not concerned with amendments to a planning
permission).
A note from Denton Wilde Sapte points out that the correct approach to
amendments was set out in Bernard Wheatcroft [1980] namely, ‘whether
the development permitted is in substance different from that applied for’
– and ‘the main criterion… is whether the development has so changed
that to grant it would be to deprive those who should have been consulted
on the changed development the opportunity of such consultation’. Clients
who make minor amendments may find LAs arguing that a new planning
application is needed. Such arguments should be resisted. Source:
Denton Wilde Sapte.
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November 2006 |
