Who will use it and how?

• Developers/Planning Applicants
• Local Authority Policy Planners and Development Control officers
• Local Authority Planning Committee Members

Developers/Planning Applicants:

Creating and working on ‘checklist projects’

• Registration is required (for more details see How does it work?). Once registration is confirmed by email, the developer/planning applicant can login and create any number of ‘checklist projects’.
• Developers/Planning Applicants may work on their ‘checklist projects’ at any time as long as they have logged in. The author(s) of any ‘checklist project’ will be the only person (people) to have editing rights to the ‘project(s)’. The developer/planning applicant may give editing rights by giving their user password and username to any consultant but the control of that is entirely in the hands of the developer/planning applicant.

Submitting ‘checklist projects’ as part of a planning application

• When the developer/planning applicant completes a ‘checklist project’ a link to ‘Submit Project’ is provided at the top of the ‘Current status’ page. This is to be used ONLY if and when the checklist project is submitted as part of a planning application to Brighton & Hove City Council.
• All new residential development (including conversions) are required to submit a completed checklist.
• The checklist project title and username should be provided by the developer/planning applicant in the application form so that the council can enter the allocated application number.
• The council’s Development Control (DC) will grant the application a number and enter it into the checklist system. At this point the editing rights to this particular ‘checklist project’ are frozen and only the council can make editing rights available for the developer/planning applicant for changes to be made. Once changes have been made, editing rights are frozen once again by the council’s DC freezes the project again. The ‘checklist project’ will then be part of the council’s monitoring system.
• The Developer/Planning Applicant then has no editorial control over a ‘checklist project’ submitted as planning applications. However, the developer/planning applicant may still work on the system to edit and develop further projects.
• Only ‘checklist projects’ that are submitted as planning applications will be assessed via the monitoring system.

Using the checklist to save money and time

• Developers/planning applicants may find that it is helpful to consider questions that are “not applicable” early in the design process, and agree them with the Local Planning Authority before working up the design if at all possible – re-working is expensive if the design is contrary to planning policy.
• Make sure the design team are familiar with the checklist questions at the start of the design process so that the issues can be considered as an integral part of the design process, rather than trying to add “bolt ons” at a later stage.
• Answer questions in the Checklist as the design is worked up. Use the reports from the Checklist to see whether the design meets your (and your client’s) requirements, identify weaknesses that may be questioned in the planning process and reassess after changes.

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Local Authority Policy Planners and Development Control officers:

‘Checklist projects’ and the Development Control process

• It is up to the developers/planning applicants to create a Brighton & Hove ‘checklist project’ and fill in the relevant information.
• When a ‘checklist project’ is submitted as a part of planning application, the developer/planning applicant is expected to provide the checklist project title and username in the planning application form. Brighton and Hove planning officers may look at any ‘checklist project’ at any time using project title and username, but council rights are view only.
• Once the Development Control (DC) team has granted the planning application a number, this number is entered it into the ‘checklist project’. At this point, that particular ‘checklist project’ is frozen and only the council can make it available for editing again for possible changes by the developer/planning applicant. Once changes have been made, the council’s DC freezes the project again.
• Once frozen, the Developer/Planning Applicant has no editorial control over the information contained in that particularly ‘checklist project’. However, the developer/planning applicant may still work on the system to edit and develop other projects.

Supporting policy framework

• The Brighton & Hove Checklist acts as an “aide memoire”, picking out the key sustainability issues in regional and local planning policy that need to be considered in planning applications. National, regional and local minimum standards/targets for sustainable development have been incorporated into the Brighton & Hove Checklist.
• The council’s Strategy & Monitoring team will be overseeing the monitoring of the Checklist, but planning officers in general can produce and view reports on stored information on individual or a group of sustainability checklists submitted as planning applications Responses to particular questions can be amalgamated from all submitted Checklists to provide trend on progress towards sustainability objectives. These will be used to inform the Annual Monitoring Report and future iterations of the relevant policy documents.

Accessing report:

• The summary report from each ‘checklist project’ submitted as part of a planning application provide a graphic overview report as to how the proposed development performs against the sustainability issues drawn from the South East Plan (SEP), Local Plan policies, emerging Core Strategy and other relevant Local Development Framework (LDF) documents. The profile of performance against 8 different section headings can be used as a “Rule of Thumb” as to whether the development is addressing sustainability issues pertinent to a particular type of site. For example, a site close to an environmentally sensitive area would be expected to perform well on ecology issues.

Scrutinising checklist content

• It is NOT expected that the DC officers will interrogate the answer to all questions. However, having all the information in one place (or references to appropriate sources of information in the rest of the planning application materials) makes, in principle, it easier to examine specific issues.
• DC officers can consult the full list of questions to highlight those of either local or site specific importance. This will signpost those questions and responses that the Development Control officer may wish to interrogate in detail to assess the suitability of the response.
• Where scores for particular sections are unexpectedly high or low, the officer can look at the relevant questions to see whether this is acceptable for the development and site in question.
• If the application or site is particularly significant, the Planner can either conduct a random check of answers to questions to satisfy themselves that the scoring has been carried out appropriately, or can ask for independent verification from a third party.

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Local Authority Planning Committee Members:

• The summary graphic report from the Checklist gives an overview as to how the development performs on regional sustainability issues. The Committee may wish to have more detailed feedback on particular issues, and can choose to interrogate the responses to questions of interest.
• When discussing planning applications with other interested stakeholders, the Checklist provides a common framework for those discussions. It is anticipated that ward Councillors may wish to interrogate responses to specific questions that are of concern to either objectors or supporters of development proposals.

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