The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 received Royal Assent on 26 October 2023. It set out various ‘levelling-up missions’, but also contained a smorgasbord of amendments to various aspects of the planning system, including measures pertaining to compulsory purchase.
Section 183 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 gives confirming authorities the power to approve a CPO conditionally. This means they can confirm it even if key elements, such as planning permission, are still pending. Previously, missing pieces like this could prevent a CPO from being approved.
This article explains the new conditional confirmation powers for compulsory purchase orders introduced by the act, how the process will work in practice, and what acquiring authorities should expect next.
Section 183(1) of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 inserts a new 13BA section into the Acquisition of Land Act 1981. It provides quite simply that a confirming authority may confirm a CPO conditionally. If it does so, then the CPO is not operative until the confirming authority is satisfied that the conditions are met, and it will be up to the acquiring authority to apply to the confirming authority for such a finding to be reached.
When setting what the conditionality is, the confirming authority also must say by when the conditions have to be met. This is important as if that the allotted time expires and no application is made, or it is made but refused, then the CPO will expire.
The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 provision sets out some detail as to what the procedure, to be fully set out in future regulations, will entail when an application is made to discharge the conditions attached to the CPO. This includes notification to ‘relevant objectors’ of such application, giving them the opportunity to make written representations. Relevant objectors for these purposes are remaining objectors to the CPO itself who did not withdraw their objections by the time the CPO was confirmed.
Interestingly, section 13B of the Acquisition of Land Act 1981 is applied to this stage of proceedings. This is a section which provides that a confirming authority may make orders as regards costs.
A confirmation notice is still to be served in the usual way, albeit with some tweaked wording and a slightly amended procedure. There is then a second confirmation notice introduced at the stage of satisfaction of the conditions, called a ‘fulfilment notice’.
This means that the usual confirmation notice:
The fulfilment notice then follows. A fulfilment notice will confirm that the conditions subject to which the CPO was granted are met, and that the CPO will become operative. It must annex the information contained in the confirmation notice and is to be accompanied by a copy of the CPO itself.
A prescribed form of notice will follow in regulations no doubt. This must be served on the wider audience, being not just objectors but all those who are qualifying persons, i.e. those falling with section 12 of the Acquisition of Land Act 1981.
Fulfilment notices must be erected on site, be published in a local newspaper, and be put online, as this will not have happened at the first confirmation stage.
The acquiring authority has six weeks to carry out these steps, or such longer period as is agreed between the confirming and acquiring authorities. If they fail to do so the confirming authority can step in, and recover costs of doing so from the acquiring authority.
Much like confirmation notices, fulfilment notices are to appear on the local land charges register and so should be sent to the chief land registrar.
The coming into force of the relevant provisions has not been quick, and even now regulations are needed to fully flesh out the procedure before it can be used.
However, as things stand:
Therefore, we just await regulations under the new section 13BA of the Acquisition of Land Act 1981 to set out the procedure for making applications under this new process.
As above, we await regulations setting out the full procedure to be followed for a CPO to be conditionally confirmed. Things are rarely straight forward in the CPO world and so those will need to be carefully scrutinised. However, there is clearly a place for conditional CPOs, as those that have grappled with aligning timescales concerning planning permissions, and especially secured funding, will have experienced.
Provided the ‘second stage’ of notifying parties that the conditions are met, at which stage written representations are invited, does not turn into a rehash of the arguments held at the public inquiry, this could be a useful process under which CPO can be started earlier than currently.
For further information, please contact David Richardson, head of our planning and infrastructure consenting team.
