- Target:
- Department of Communities and Local Government
- Region:
- United Kingdom
The Planning Inspectorate effectively removes all democratic accountability in the planning system by continuously overriding the decisions of elected Councillors. This effectively allows developers to have free reign to push development by winning planning appeals either on technicalities or on the whim of an inspector with no local knowledge of the area they are deciding on.
The purpose of this petition is to abolish the Planning Inspectorate and allow appeals only where there has been a breach of the law which can be decided by the judicial process. This will strengthen the power of local democracy by ensuring those who make decisions can be held accountable.
Developers should also be encouraged to engage constructively with local authorities and local people rather than using the planning system to fight against their decisions. New housing will always be needed but should not come at the expense of destroying villages and putting significant strain on infrastructure.
We, the undersigned, call on the Government to abolish the Planning Inspectorate in order to restore democratic accountability to the planning system.
Decisions on planning applications should rest with locally elected Councillors who are accountable to their constituents.
The appeals process should be reviewed so that it can only be used when an authority’s decision has no legal justification within the planning system at the discretion of the Secretary of State.
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The Abolish the Planning Inspectorate petition to Department of Communities and Local Government was written by Rob Gough and is in the category Politics at GoPetition.