Member

Where green belt is concerned, which is an example I have used many times, NDMP would not tell a local authority what the boundaries of its green or grey belt should be, but it might well tell it that, once you set those boundaries, many of the technical decisions and considerations that apply within the green or grey belt should be determined on a consistent, nationally determined basis. That has disappeared from the question of the national scheme of delegation. This is absurd. If the Government are going to publish NDMP, the statute will provide that these policies cannot be contradicted in the local plan and must be carried through consistently, both in the local plan and in the decisions that are made pursuant to it. Necessarily, if an application or a decision is to be made in accordance with policies in the national development management policies, they must therefore, in my view, be delegated to planning officers, because they must be made on what is essentially a legal decision about whether the Government’s existing policies have determined the nature of the decision.