Angus Walker, partner and planning lawyer at Bircham Dyson Bell LLP believes that although Cala Homes lost its case earlier this month in the Court of Appeal, the ruling was actually a thinly veiled victory for the home builder and will see planning applications reinstated until the Localism Bill takes effect next year.
"The window of opportunity for home builders to get their planning applications approved has just reopened," explains Angus Walker.
"Although the court disagreed that the Government's forthcoming abolition of the regional strategies can never be a factor in the planning application process, it did agree that it would usually be given little or no weight, and was therefore somewhat of a victory for homebuilders.
"There is therefore still a decreasing window of opportunity for home builders to get planning applications granted by local councils under existing home building targets - only the Localism Bill coming into force will make the abolition fully effective."
It is likely that the Localism Bill will take effect around April 2012 when the Government's wish to abolish regional strategies will come to fruition and the regional targets for the number of homes that can be built in each locality will be abolished and replaced by financial incentives for individual local authorities to grant house-building applications. This will mean that much of the planning work that has been done by home builders to date may become out of date, and further applications will stand less chance of being granted.
"For their part, local authorities must continue to consider planning applications and restart anything that has been put on hold due to the ongoing debate. However, some Local Authorities have already developed new policies that ignore the regional targets and therefore may have to reassess them once again."
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