Sometimes you have to have sympathy for the people who work in planning departments, not least because of the need to keep up with changes to the planning system.

Today, at a Planning Committee of the New Forest National Park we learnt that Government have published a new National Planning Policy Framework, published yesterday, but takes effect immediately, rather making things difficult for planning application reports we had to consider, written under the old rules but now subject to different ones overnight!

It will take a while before officers have had a chance to consider all the changes. However, there appears to be an interesting change to how retrospective applications are to be dealt with.

Time and time again, we see examples of people ignoring planning laws and having something built without authorisation. They then seek to regularise it all by making what is called a Retrospective planning application.

Under previous rules, the planning committee were not allowed to take into account the retrospective nature of the application and simply deal with it as if the rules had been followed.

In a change, Government seem to have decided that this isn’t fair and just and that the planners and planning committee are now allowed to attach great weight to the unauthorised nature of applications, especially if there is strong indication that it was done deliberately.

I welcome this change. It might well discourage people from ignoring the need for planning permissions, especially in the context of a National Park.