Procedure for monitoring major development sites

Major development sites require a pro-active approach to monitoring and enforcement. Due to their scale, development on major sites may be away from existing properties, and active building sites are usually not readily accessible to the public. There is therefore scope for significant breaches of planning control to go unreported. Whilst these breaches may well come to light as the development progresses, and properties are sold and occupied, by this stage it may be much more difficult and costly to remedy the breach.

Major developments will also often have a significant number of planning conditions and complicated Section 106 Agreements requiring the delivery of affordable housing, public infrastructure and a range of other requirements. It is the developer’s responsibility to comply with the approved plans, conditions and legal agreements, but these responsibilities are often dealt with at different levels of the developer’s organisation, and it is not uncommon for inadvertent breaches of conditions and agreements to occur as the development progresses. If these are brought to the developer’s attention at an early stage compliance will be easier to achieve.

In view of these considerations, it is proposed to introduce a pro-active system of monitoring major development sites whereby planning officers organise periodic site tours to identify issues. The procedure is set out below:

• For the purposes of this procedure a Major Development Site is defined as one that will provide 10 dwellings or more or is an employment or mixed development site of more than 1 Hectare.
• Officers will conduct a monitoring visit to a Major Development Site approximately 3 months after commencement of development. It is now a statutory requirement for developers to submit a Commencement Notice to the LPA prior to works commencing.
• The monitoring visit will be preceded by a desktop exercise to clarify any conditions or obligations that were triggered by commencement of development or that should have been addressed at an early stage.
• The purpose of the visit will be to ensure that these conditions and obligations have been complied with and to ensure that, in general, the development appears to be progressing in accordance with the approved plans.
• It remains the developer’s responsibility to ensure compliance with the approved plans, therefore the monitoring visit will not involve detailed checking of setting out of roads and buildings.
• If the visual inspection suggests that there are discrepancies, they will be drawn to the developer’s attention and the developer will be asked to provide evidence of compliance with the approved plans within a reasonable timescale.
• Failure to provide the evidence will be treated as a potential breach of planning control and dealt with in accordance with our Planning Enforcement Policy.

The Planning Contributions and Affordable Housing Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) planning-contributions-spd_2022.pdf (torbay.gov.uk) seeks S106 monitoring contributions where development gives rise to a particular monitoring need (see Section 2.16).