• Home
• News
• About the council
• Business services
• Community
• Council tax
• Environment
• Housing and benefits
• Jobs
• Leisure and tourism
• Parking and transport
• Planning
• Recycling and waste

A–Z index:

• A
• B
• C
• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• I
• J
• K
• L
• M
• N
• O
• P
• Q
• R
• S
• T
• U
• V
• W
• X
• Y
• Z

About the planning process

Now we have received the Stonehenge planning application, it will need to go through the planning process before a decision can be made. This page provides a brief, non-technical summary of the main parts of the planning process and how they will be applied in this case.

Registration

When the application first arrives every piece of paperwork is analysed by the Support Team to see if it can be legally registered. Because of the size and complexity of the case it will take the council two weeks to register the application. This compares to a period of 3 days for other cases.

The publicity and consultation process

For a normal planning application about 5 statutory organisations will be consulted, the immediate residents will be notified and a site notice will be put up. In comparison, for the Stonehenge planning application over 80 organisations will be consulted, and all 13,000 residents living in the Northern area of the district will be sent a letter, information leaflet and response form. The public consultation period will last six weeks.

All responses will be carefully read and recorded and the main reasons for any objections or support will be summarised and taken into account later in the process when an evaluation of the acceptability of the proposals is being made.

Negotiations and assessment of the proposals

A site visit will be made and the Case Officer will see if the application meets the recommendations of local planning policies including the Local Plan. Then other factors will be considered, including the impact on the local ecology and environment, archaeology and the comfort of local residents. The comments of the consultees and neighbours will also be considered.

At this stage there may be some meetings with the applicants (English Heritage) to request revisions to the plans or further clarification, in order to address areas of objection or uncertainty which have emerged.

Writing the report

When the consultation period comes to an end and negotiations have concluded the Case Officer will then write a report which will be placed before a committee of elected Members (district councillors). This report will include a recommendation for either refusal or approval.

The report has to be a fair and balanced appraisal of all the planning issues that have emerged. Any objections or support from third parties will be recorded and summarised in the report, which will also include what actions have been taken to address the issues that have been raised.

The decision

Elected members will take the decision to accept or reject the planning application. The application will first go to the Northern Area Committee for their views, and then to the Planning and Regulatory Committee for a final decision. The members of each committee will take questions from the public and then debate the issues raised by the application before voting on whether or not it should be approved.

Call in

As with any major planning application, the Secretary of State (in this case the Deputy Prime Minister) retains the right to "call in" the application for consideration, and take the power to make a decision out of the council's hands.

The Secretary of State is consulted when the application is received and again when the council is ready to make a decision, to see if he wishes to call it in. There is no way to predict the likelihood of this happening, but it usually depends on how much public interest there is in a case.