Nottingham Means Business supported the city council when we adopted our Development Protocol in 2011. This set out our ambition to be the most business friendly development service in the country. It helped establish a planning service offering with speedy, consistent and professional support to ensure the development process is as risk free and cost effective as possible. It was aimed specifically at the larger development schemes within the city from pre-application advice stage through to achieving planning permission.
Whilst we can’t guarantee the grant of planning permission, our Protocol and now well established partnership working culture has meant that 100% of officer recommendations to planning committee have been agreed over the last few years. Over 95% of our major applications are approved and over 95% have a decision within the agreed timescale. This makes us the top performing core city in the country.
The same pre-application approach has now been rolled out to all types and scale of developments. This means a new simplified process and performance monitoring have been put in place and a fee introduced for providing formal pre-application advice. Our fees compare favourably with other core cities and neighbouring councils and we continue to offer free early informal advice.
We want the quality of developments to match our ambition for the city and so we now offer a Design Service to help provide cost effective and tailored early support to reduce the need for expensive redesigns and amendments. This provides design principles and site layout designs that can then be worked up more fully through pre-application discussions.
All the information on our pre-application and Design Service are available on our website. And I’m more than happy to talk to any NMB members about the city council’s planning service – how it works for you and where it might improve further.
Please feel free to call me on 0115 87 62797 / 07908 129 906 or email: paul.seddon@nottinghamcity.gov.uk