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Consultations
CLG: Proposals for a fairer planning fees system have been set out for consultation (closes on 7 January 2011). At the moment local council taxpayers have been left subsidising the costs of dealing with planning applications. Councils have been unable to recover the true costs of applications because of a fixed fee charging system set by central Government.
Press release ~ Proposals for changes to planning application fees in England: Consultation ~ Planning Costs and Fees: Final Report
MoJ: Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, has recently unveiled a programme of wide-ranging reform to legal aid & civil litigation costs. Two consultations (both closing on 14 February 2011), published last week, mark the first step in a wider programme of work to radically reform & rebalance the justice system, to ‘make it quicker, cheaper and less combative wherever possible’:
* The consultation on legal aid reform aims to tackle the spread of expensive & often unnecessary litigation into everyday society at the taxpayer’s expense and bring down the £2bn+ cost of the legal aid system
* The civil litigation costs paper contains proposals to tackle the spiralling costs payable by people who have been sued in ‘no win no fee’ cases, alongside other proposals to make civil costs more reasonable
Press release ~ Consultation on Legal Aid Reform ~ Reform of Civil Litigation Funding & Costs in England & Wales (Jackson review)
Defra: A consultation (closes on 22 February 2011) on new guidelines for considering large-scale waste water infrastructure projects has been launched by the Government. The Waste Water National Policy Statement (NPS), announced by Defra, will be used by the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) when deciding whether such applications should get the go-ahead.
FSA: The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has outlined proposals which focus on‘enhancing the mortgage sales process, the role of intermediaries and improving disclosure of information for customers’. Consultation on these proposals will close on 25 February 2011.
MoJ: Making criminal justice statistics more transparent & user friendly is the aim of a consultation launched last week. The launch of the consultation (closes on 18 February 2011) follows recommendations made in several reports, including the UK Statistics Authority Assessment of Criminal Justice Statistics, the Stern Review and Barriers to Trust.
