Our Planning System begins
Although the layout of towns can be traced back as far as the Romans with a grid system of roads and buildings alongside, the early beginnings of our present day planning system dates from the industrial and agricultural revolutions in the 1700s.
Before that time most people lived and worked in the countryside but as industry began to grow and agriculture became mechanised, people moved away from the countryside to the towns and cities that had expanded across the country. Cheap housing was built quickly and the towns and cities grew rapidly without little thought for the comforts or levels of sanitation that we are used to now.
As a consequence there was no running water, communal outside toilets which spewed raw sewerage running down the street gutter were the norm. Drinking water was contaminated as it was often taken from the same source that the untreated sewage flowed into, the rivers. The air was thick with smoke from factories and domestic fires that burned coal day and night. Life expectancy was low at 35 with killer diseases such as cholera, typhus and dysentery rife.
Public health reforms began in the 1800s with local authorities gradually taking responsibility for providing clean water and the removal of sewage and refuse. New and rebuilt housing had to have adequate drainage, toilet facilities and an ash pit. Builders had to submit details of these provisions to the local authority before they could start work. With legislation passed in 1875 to tackle overcrowded housing, the Planning System we know today started to evolve.
By the turn of the century legislation continued to improve housing conditions. The Town Planning Act of 1909 prohibited the building of back to back housing and allowed local authorities to prepare town planning schemes. The Housing Act of 1919 gave authority to the Ministry of Health to approve design of houses and the Housing Act of 1930 required all slum housing to be cleared in designated improvement areas.
Between 1919 and 1939 over four million new homes were built leading to a need for planning controls to be extended to cover the countryside. The Town & Country Planning Act 1939 accepted the desirability of countryside rural planning followed by the Restriction of Ribbon Development Act 1935 designed to prevent the sprawl of towns and cities across the countryside.
The Town & Country Planning Act of 1947 formed the basis of the system we have today and introduced two significant changes. Local Authorities had to complete a local plan setting out detailed policies and specific proposals for the development and use of land in a district. Land use would be controlled and planning permission would be required for development. Some sectors, such as agriculture, were granted exemption from planning controls which still exist today.
Further important events affecting planning include -
1955 The national Green Belt system to prevent urban sprawl
1968 County Structure plans introduced to co-ordinate and guide local plans
1988 Regional planning guidance introduced to act as a strategic guide for county structure plans
1990 The Town & Country Planning Act divided planning into forward planning and development control. Forward planning is about setting out the Local Authority's strategy for the future -through a development plan – and development control is about controlling the development that happens
1991 The Planning & Compensation Act 1991 amends the Town & Country Planning Act and introduces the plan-led system, affirming that planning applications should be decided in lin with the development plan
2004 The Planning & Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 scraps county-level structure plans and introduced statutory regional planning called Regional Spatial Strategies.
2008 The Planning Act 2008 introduced a new planning system for nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs). From March 2010 the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) started to make decisions on NSIPs with the intention of improving the efficiency with which decisions are made on such applications
2010 The new Government committed to radically reforming the planning system, based on the principle of localism. Legislation to realise these reforms is currently making its way through Parliament, and includes measures to abolish regional planning, introduce new "neighbourhood plans", and scrap the IPC introduced by the Planning Act 2008
(Source – Campaign to Protect Rural England www.cpre.org.uk)