Critical debates in planning - Essay Example

sents a violation of the principles of equal rights, but that this situation, although highly advantageous to certain economic interests, has been justified by government by the first assertion related to instrumental participation. It follows therefore that, if third-party rights of challenge can be shown to have relevance beyond self-interest, in principle the inequality of rights cannot be justified. It cannot be ignored that, although rights are problematic as a contested concept, they generally represent a valuable and accepted mechanism for safeguarding fundamental attributes of liberal democracies.

A key difficulty, however, is that, within planning, rights discourses tend to have emphasized rights as vehicles for expressing interests, rather than emphasizing the values that they seek to protect. As a result, the invoking of rights becomes seen as a problem of how to manage competing interests in the context of other models of accountability for example representative democracy. This has been justified by the fact that it is possible to challenge the grant of planning permission in the h high court by judicial review.

This argument stems from the fact that judicial review the in the high court is very different from an appeal planning inspector and involves for greater costs. Barclays also points out that there’s need for third party rights because of perceived injustice in the procedures for participation in planning in that prospective developers may appeal against refusal whereas third parties cannot appeal against approval. There should be an opportunity for those disadvantaged and aggrieved by planning approvals to seek redress from an independent body.

A third party right of appeal is not really necessary because by default they are involved in the planning process right from preparation, application and planning appeal. He reinforces his arguments by dismissing the fact that developer rights in planning evolve and are not sacrosanct because