Planning Circular 4/2013: Planning appeals

THE CHANGES

Consolidation

5. The 2013 Regulations include a number of changes made previously to the Town and Country Planning (Appeals) (Scotland) Regulations 2008 (the 2008 Regulations), namely:

• modifications for appeals relating to planning obligations and good neighbour agreements;
• the inclusion of procedures for listed building consent and conservation area consent cases; and
• minor changes to requirements ( e.g. include copies of decision notices with an appeal, allow for no further procedure as an option for parties) and textual changes.

6. Regulation 34(1) of and schedule 5 to the 2013 Regulations revoke the 2008 Regulations and the provisions of statutory instruments which amended the 2008 Regulations.

Changes made by the 2013 Regulations

7. In addition to the above, the 2013 Regulations:

• include provisions for appeals to Ministers and applications called-in by Ministers for determination under the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (Scotland) Regulations 1984 as amended (the 1984 Regulations);
• amend regulation 9 on further procedure to allow appointed persons discretion to, for example, require additional information of a non-controversial nature without initiating all of the requirements on circulating it for comments;
• include an "opt-in" procedure for use, primarily, in cases with large numbers of representations;
• amend the definition of a hearing statement so that the requirement is that it "fully sets out" the case to be made at the hearing rather than "outlines" the case to be made at a hearing;
• amend Rule 4(b)(ii) in both the Hearing Session Rules and Inquiry Session Rules with regard to the list of regulations which already require information on appeals to be made available to the public;
• include national security provisions - to allow the processing of cases involving security sensitive information which cannot be made generally available to the public on grounds of national security; and
• apply certain of the regulations to applications for planning permission for urgent Crown development made directly to Ministers under section 242A of the 1997 Act.