Let's Play Validation

Lets Play

“VALIDATION!”

A game that all town planners can play.

VALIDATION! is a game of skill and cunning, pitting your wits against the application validation requirements.

Players pick a card to identify the type of application to be submitted. There are hundreds to choose from. Then progress round the board collecting reports and plans from your fellow professionals before obtaining enough to make your planning submission.

Be the Authority and challenge other players to see how quickly they can get an application accepted. Your aim is to balance an oppressive workload against a limited staffing level and secure maximum planning fees, whilst meeting stringent application deadlines. Consistently ask for more information, irrespective of the need for it. Charge humungous fees for Pre-App meetings without giving too much away. Use your “Lost in the System” card to delay and send applicants back to 'the office’.

Or be the applicant and try to meet your clients’ unfeasibly tight development deadlines for proposals that appear to challenge every single policy aspect in the development plan. Guide your team through the planning application labyrinth, but beware those last minute changes and only submit when you’re convinced you are ready. Avoid those deadly “There is a problem with your computer which has had to close” cards, that loose forever the last 10 pages of your carefully crafted supporting statement.

• How many additional documents and plans will you be required to submit before your application is deemed valid? Use your knowledge of the new process to argue the toss with the Council.

• You’ve spent hours calculating the required planning fee only to find that you apparently owe twice as much. Use your professional skill to negotiate your way through the fee regulations.

Applicants are ranked according to ability:-

• Three or more submissions before validation: Amateur – a likely outcome for beginners to the game
• Two submissions: Professional – product testing suggests you will achieve this level after at least 50 submissions
• First time submission: Genius (or dead jammy) – you’re spending way too much time in the office

The winner is the first person to have their application fully validated (only to find that a statutory consultee requires even greater detail - despite prior consultation - so that the application is immediately scheduled for a delegated refusal and you have to fall back on the free go).

Now buy VALIDATION Plus! – all the thrills and spills of the basic game, but this time you’re on a fixed fee basis. Control those external costs, negotiate S.106 and unilateral Infrastructure Charges and explain to the client why your timescale and cost estimates are extending into infinity.

VALIDATION!

You won’t live to regret it!

With thanks to RICS Books ( www.ricsbooks.com )

Extract taken from Ian Butter's Book "The New Planning System - Questions and Answers" (2009)