Planning Portal News: Latest permitted development changes in England introduce two new ‘prior approvals’

Introduced in mid-December 2021 and taking effect through the first two weeks of January 2022, The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development etc.) (England) (Amendment) (No. 3) Order 2021 is the latest in a long line of government tweaks to permitted development.

This amendment is primarily focussed on bringing areas of the order up-to-date by:

• referencing a more recent (July 2021) version of the National Planning Policy Framework
• extending or making permanent several temporary rights around movable structures, holding of markets, and emergency development.

It also introduces rights for buildings on closed defence sites and limits compensation where rights are removed by ‘Article 4’ directions.

Full details of all the changes are available in the relevant explanatory note and memorandum.

Most relevant to us, is that two of the rights will now require ‘prior approval’ applications to be submitted to Local Planning Authorities, these are:

• Part 4: Temporary buildings and uses – Class BB: Moveable structures for historic visitor attractions and listed pubs, restaurants etc
• Part 19: Development by the Crown or for national security purposes – Class TA: Development by the Crown on a closed defence site

We are working to initially make PDF fillable forms for these application types available, and to update our fee schedules to account for them. We are hoping to have the forms available mid-February.

Once the new Planning Portal platform is live, our roadmap includes adding all the currently outstanding types of prior approval application to the service so they can be created and submitted online. This will include a new version of our data standard to ensure that all submissions can be passed as data to Local Planning Authorities.