Pete Chivers
Forum Member
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Thursday, March 08, 2007 3:33 PM
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It appears to me that, under the terms of the statutory condition, if all reserved matters are submitted within the time period specified then the outline consent can never lapse. Surely the wording says that it is valid until two years after the final approval of reserved matters. If reserved matters consent is never granted then the outline consent will continue indefinitely. There is no mechanism for it to lapse. The statutory wording also implies that there is no mechanism for councils to ultimately refuse reserved matters consent. The wording only refers to final approval of reserved matters. I certainly seem to recall that many years ago it was a commonly held belief that, under planning law, planning authorities could not ultimately refuse reserved matters consent once they have granted outline consent for the development. This seems logical and also equitable.
It seems to me that if all reserved matters have been submitted by the time specified in the consent then section 93(4)(b) does not come into operation since an application for all reserved matters has been submitted in accordance with the condition. If it were not possible to resubmit lawfully submitted reserved matters then councils, in the persons of their planning officers, could in effect revoke a planning consent without compensation by procrastinating or not approving any application for reserved matters until the time period in the condition ran out. This could enable them to reverse their committees decision in effect.
I can't believe that those persons who drafted the wording of this section of the act could ever have intended that a lawfully granted planning consent could be made statutorily unimplementable by the councils being able to just do nothing and delay matters until no further reserved matters can be submitted. I would be interested in your comments. PWC.
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