§ Mr. Baldryasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what progress has been made towards the introduction of simplified planning zones.
§ Mr. WaldegraveA commencement order and regulations enabling local planning authorities in England and Wales to make simplified planning zone schemes (SPZ's) come into force today. The regulations provide the detailed procedures and were the subject of consultation earlier this year.
SPZ's are based on the planning regime successfully pioneered in enterprise zones and will provide local authorities with an important new means of facilitating development, particularly in the older urban areas. They enable local planning authorities to give advance planning permission for specified types of development in defined areas. Schemes will provide developers with certainty about the acceptability of projects, and remove the need for them to make individual planning applications in the area concerned.
I hope that authorities will take full advantage of this new opportunity and prepare schemes as soon as practicable.
Certain types of development are excluded from the scope of SPZ's, and the Act provides that SPZ's cannot be designated in certain protected areas such as national parks and green belts.
New, simplified procedures for the preparation of local plans also come into operation today.