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Statutory consultees play an important role in the planning application process by providing expert advice on significant environmental, transport, safety, and heritage issues.  There are currently 13 organisations that local planning authorities (LPAs) must consult about specialist issues when they receive relevant planning applications, from the Environment Agency and National Highways to Historic England. Their role is very important, but there is widespread agreement that the system is not working well, causing needless duplication of effort and delays in making decisions. Hence the Government issued in November a consultation document about ways to make the system more efficient and effective. One of the key aims is to reduce the amount of statutory consultation and follow up requests that are required, and it is difficult to argue against the proposition that there are currently too many needless referrals to the consultees. The most eye-catching proposal ...

The latest projections from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) show that between 2022 and 2032, the number of households in England is expected to grow from 23.5 million to 25.9 million, an increase of 10.3%. That is equivalent to an average of 242,000 additional households per year. Nearly two-thirds of that increase will come from households headed by someone over 65 years old. Rates of increase will be much lower for households headed by someone under retirement age. An ageing population and a decline in the birth rate will bring a significant change in the pattern of households across England within the next decade. Households including children are expected to fall by 8.4% in the 10 years ending in 2032, from 6.7 million to 6.1 million; and such households will therefore fall from 28.3% to 23.6% of the total number of households. The ...

The Government recently published Planning Statistics for the year to March 2025. For the 32 London boroughs, the statistics showed some interesting features. First, they showed that all but three boroughs – Camden, Ealing and Harrow delegated decisions to officers on 90% or more of the applications they received; and that 19 of them delegated decisions on more than 98% of applications. Two boroughs - Enfield and Redbridge - delegated decisions on nearly 100% of applications. Second, rates of approval varied much more widely, from an outlier of 64% in Hounslow, to 98% in neighbouring Hammersmith and Fulham. Rates of approval can vary for many different reasons, of course, good and bad. They depend crucially on the nature and the numbers of applications each borough receives and on the widely-varying characteristics of each local area. But it is worth noting that 26 of the ...

The first initiative to bring London-based amenity societies together as a federation was the brainchild of two prominent and environmentally-committed members of the Blackheath Society, Neil Rhind and Tony Aldous. Neil, whose expertise was on the history and social development of Blackheath, had been the Society's press officer and later its President from 2016 to his death in 2023. Tony, a journalist, wrote on environmental issues for The Times and The Independent. He published many books on environmental matters, one of which was "London Villages". Tony was also a member of the Blackheath Society. As co-editor of the Civic Trust’s bi-monthly magazine Heritage Outlook, he was a regular visitor to its headquarters at 17 Carlton House Terrace. The Civic Trust was an independent national environmental charity set up by Lord Duncan Sandys in 1959. Sandys, as Minister for Housing and Local Government between 1954-1956 ...