The Conservative Party is expected to water down plans for a far-reaching overhaul of the planning system after entering a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

This morning, law firm Davies Arnold Cooper held a seminar at its office near London’s Fleet Street that set out its expectations on how the Conservative policies for planning, set out in its “green paper”, will be affected by the coalition.

Last night, Conservative leader David Cameron (pictured left) announced he had formally entered a coalition with Liberal Democrats leader Nick Clegg (pictured right).

Davies Arnold Cooper partner and head of planning Tim Johnson said the overhaul of regional planning is set to go ahead but plans to scrap the Community Infrastructure Levy could be delayed. Johnson said he anticipated the following changes:

• Regional planning overhaul to go ahead: both parties agree on scrapping regional planning bodies, regional spatial strategies and regional housing targets.
• Localism: both support localism, to increase the power for local residents to object to developments. This includes introducing third party rights of appeal.
• Garden grabbing: both plan to cut down on garden grabbing but there is a fear from developers that a crackdown on housing development on small sites could add an extra hurdle into the planning system. The Lib Dems could also insist on more powers to protect biodiversity, which could mean more hurdles for developers.
• Infrastructure Planning Commission: the Conservatives could push through plans to scrap this early in the legislative programme, even though the Lib Dem policy on the IPC is unclear.

Both parties are also committed to scrapping Home Information Packs.

In other areas the policies are less clear. Johnson said that Conservative plans to scrap the Community Infrastructure Levy, the proposed system to replace section 106 agreements to get funding for local improvements, could be delayed.

He also said there could be delays to proposed changes to the Use Classes Order, to abolish the ability of planning inspectors to re-write local plans, and to encourage county councils and unitary authorities to compile infrastructure plans.

Suzanne Gill,  partner in the real estate team of law firm McGrigors, said the changes would need to be more finely tuned to the views of local authorities and local residents when working up development plans.

Gill said: “Over the last decade developers have been able to rely on the help of planning guidance from central government and the intervention of the Secretary of State to get approval for projects that might be opposed at the local level. That help is going to be less reliable in the future.”

She added: “The danger is if developers don’t interpret local decisions correctly and fail to appreciate what potential barriers there might be to development. Those that do not work constructively with local decision-makers will find themselves out of sync with local opinions and will struggle to secure new development opportunities. Developers may have to invest more time and money explaining their proposals to local residents and local authorities than they had before.”

• Tories unveil proposals for ‘Open Source’ planning
• Regional strategies to go, says planning boss
• Tories target planning to help cut costs
• Tories under fire from coalition of developers
• Lib Dem leader aligns with localist Tories