Local development frameworks, community strategies and area agreements - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 308

19.2 Distinctive features of the development planning system
We begin by highlighting four overarching features of the development planning
system which are distinctive relative to local transport planning, viz:
• the status of the plan-making process
• the role of authorities as developers
• the control of activity
• the division of development and transport planning responsibilities.
The status of the plan-making process
The functions of local planning authorities, like transport authorities, are dependent
on the granting of legal powers. But in the case of planning authorities the process
of plan-making is itself central to these functions and is prescribed by statute and
accompanying regulations. This makes it subject to much greater public scrutiny (and
is much more protracted as a result).
One of the main reasons why this difference exists is because the provisions of a
development plan have a direct effect on the rights of landowners to develop their
property (and hence the value attaching to it). The development planning system
therefore has to allow for the hearing and defence of these rights. The provisions of
a transport plan generally do not have such an effect, or not to the same degree.
Individual transport or traffic management proposals may affect the rights of travellers
or property owners (mainly in terms of access to premises), but their legal safeguard
is provided for in the procedures authorities have to follow to gain approval for a
particular scheme - see 22.4. With only one or two exceptions (e.g. school transport or
rail closures) no statutory rights have been established for the protection of accessibility
in a broader sense.
The role of authorities as developers
Local planning authorities are not themselves managers and investors in infrastructure
in the way that transport authorities are. Hence development plans are not primarily
mechanisms for formulating their own development programmes. Unlike local transport
plans they are not prepared primarily as an administrative exercise established by
central government to control local authority capital spending.
Instead a key feature of development plan preparation is authorities' role in
mediating between other parties who have interests in development. These will
include landowners and developers competing for the opportunity to undertake
development on individual sites as well as sections of the local community who are
seeking the promotion or restriction of development in particular places or more or
less of particular kinds of development. Development planning is therefore innately
more outward-looking in character and is a further reason for the prominence given to
community and stakeholder involvement in the plan preparation process.
The control of activity
The statutory definition of 'development' includes not merely building works but
also the use to which land or buildings are put. Development control effectively