The difficulty of a National Charging Policy is that SMR's are run by different organisations. County Councils receive limited income from planning fees whereas district and unitary authorities usually receive planning fees for most applications. Is it equitable for unitary authorities with SMRs to charge applicants for providing information necessary to satisfy a planning condition when they have already paid a fee to the planning department? The answer will probably have a political bias.
Milton Keynes Unitary Authority mainly charge commercial organisations where the request for information is for schemes not covered by local plans or are solicitor's enquiries. Solicitor's enquiries are charged £45 (wonder what they charge for letters?). Professional enquiries often necessitate the production of a licence agreement and a CD containing the SMR & events details by parish as Access databases plus some aerial photographs and historic maps where available together with MapInfo files covering historic woodlands, ridge & furrow, 18th century road pattern and field names of the district. The CD must be returned by a specific date otherwise they are fined. The present charge for the time taken to prepare the material and put it on CD is about £80 and nothing if it is part of a planning application.
Brian Giggins
Milton Keynes
visit the official Milton Keynes web site at http://www.mkweb.co.uk/mkcouncil
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