Labour’s proposal to force local residents to pay a minimum additional £100 surcharge when submitting planning applications has been condemned by local Lib Dem councillors.
At this week’s meeting of Sefton Council senior Labour councillor Patrick McKinley called for the National Planning Policy to be changed so that applicants for planning permission will be forced to engage with local councils before submitting applications.
Such a stage is called “Pre Application Advice” and Sefton Council currently charges a minimum of £100 (rising to £175 if a meeting is involved) for this.
Cllr McKinley’s proposal, including the call to revoke paragraph 189 of the NPPF, is detailed at http://modgov.sefton.gov.uk/moderngov/documents/s81172/2.3AMENDEDCllr%20McKinley%20National%20Policy%20Planning%20Framework.pdf It was pushed through by Sefton Council’s Labour majority and was criticised as “a money-making racket” by Lib Dem councillor Daniel Lewis.
Current Government guidelines state that councils ‘cannot require that a developer engages with them before submitting a planning application, but they should encourage take-up of any pre-application services they do offer.’ This is the approach that Sefton Labour seek to overturn.
“The present policy seems us to be a perfectly sensible. For Labour to say that it should become compulsory for applicants to ‘engage’ with them in advance and pay an extra £100 minimum for pre application advice is just a money making racket,” says Cllr Lewis.
“We called for them to reconsider, but once again Labour simply pushed it through”.
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