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Planning Bill

Okay; we will look forward to that. The other issue that I wish to raise is the role of a local authority as a statutory consultee under the pre-application consultation system. A local authority will be asked to do two different things. One is to provide information. It is perfectly reasonable that there should be a deadline such as 28 days if the applicant is serving a notice on a local authority asking for information on, for example, local sewers, traffic counts, what is in the LDF and so on. It is reasonable that a local authority must provide that information quickly, because it possesses that information. If the local authority is efficient in any way, it will be able to pull the information off the shelf or out of a computer and provide it. That is different from the local authority as a consultee being asked to provide its considered views on a proposal—in other words, being asked to provide its opinion, based on facts and information. That is why 28 days is onerous and will cause bother.