Some councils will receive the advice from Natural England out of the blue, and it can be difficult to know what to do next. We've spoken to councils who have had to work some of this out on their own, and the questions and prompts below might help to organise your thoughts and first steps.
First steps checklist
We've produced a 'first steps checklist' with some key questions and prompts to help organise your thoughts and assess the scale of the issue.
Some councils will receive the advice from Natural England out of the blue, and it can be difficult to know what to do next. We've spoken to councils who have had to work some of this out on their own, and the questions and prompts below might help to organise your thoughts and first steps.
Leadership and first steps
- Who is going to be lead person? How are they going to be supported?
- Do you have a planning committee soon? Are affected cases going to committee?
Government Support
Is there going to be financial support? It might be tied into the financial year - you might need to move quite quickly.
Extent
- The advice applies to a catchment (not the council). Do you have a map? Can you relate it to wards or other boundaries that make it easy to read-across?
- Put a map on the wall? Or find a way of making it simple to understand what is in scope or not. There needs to be a new step in validation and issuing decisions- refer to the map.
- Any major sites / growth areas? Anything that is a priority?
- Any appeals? Do you need to talk to the inspectorate?
Comms
- Talk to your staff. Agree any lines.
- Talk to your corporate comms people. Confirm "yes" you have advice, but it's complicated and you're thinking about what happens next.
- Talk to portfolio holder - bring them up to speed and ask them how to keep them up to date (if necessary)
- Talk to planning committee - is anything they were expecting to see at committee caught up in this?
- Talk to developers and applicants - be honest with them. This is complex and a problem outside your control so decisions may be delayed for extended periods unless some "quick wins" can be found for mitigation.
- Talk to other councils in the catchment. Start to work out who are major players for water quality (like the water company).
Legal
- Some councils have spent money getting a second opinion on the advice. Our advice is not to bother - tell us if you want robust advice or tools and we can make it available for everyone to recycle.
Strategy
- What to do with live planning applications? How many are affected? What about pre-application advice - do you need to revisit ?
- What proportion of work is going to be effected? How to move resource from BAU to dealing with the issue?
- What does this mean for your spatial strategy? Your sites? Your local plan?