Explanatory note

The Housing and Planning Act 1986 amends the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 to empower local authorities to make simplified planning zone schemes. Such a scheme provides planning permission within the area covered by the scheme for development in accordance with the scheme, without the need for specific application.

These Regulations, which apply throughout England and Wales, are concerned with the procedure for making and altering such schemes. They are made under, and supplement the provision made by, Schedule 8A to the 1971 Act (which is set out in Schedule 6 to the 1986 Act). They prescribe the periods within which representations and objections must be made (regulations 3 and 4) and lay down a procedure for the consideration by the local planning authority of any reports occasioned by objections (regulation 9) and for the modification of proposals to make or alter a scheme (regulations 7 and 13). They also specify the content or form of certain notices to be given by the authority (regulations 5, 6, 10 and 11).

Regulation 15 generally applies the regulations with necessary modifications where the Secretary of State intervenes to make or alter a scheme himself.