Mapping out justiceThe human rights act should help remove politics from planning, reports Victoria Maccallum

John Major's dream of an England of warm beer and Sunday cricket may not be the first image that springs to mind on a stroll through an average English city centre: skyscrapers and multiplexes jostle for space with sprawling retail outlets, and Sunday cricket is more likely to be played at an out-of-town sports complex than on the village green.However, a behind-the-scenes battle is being fought between land developers and environment protesters, with planning solicitors playing a vital role in this fight to keep England to some extent green and pleasant.The bench dealt a major blow to the planning industry last month, when the High Court ruled that the system of deciding planning applications was incompatible with the Human Rights Act, specifically the requirement that all objections be heard by an 'independent and impartial tribunal'.

At the moment, the majority of requests for planning applications - about 45,000 are received every month - go through without question, but if an appeal is lodged against a refusal of permission, planning inspectors from the Department of Environment Transport and the Regions (DETR) move in and carry out an inquiry.

However, the Secretary of State currently has the final say on controversial planning decisions and is able to overrule his own inspectors - a system which the court decided was neither independent nor impartial, as he is essentially ruling on his own policy.

'It's a case of "he who pays the piper calls the tune", 'says David Hardy, in-house counsel at Leeds-based niche law firm Wilbraham & Co.

'People have to realise that unless changes are made to the current system, decisions will continue to be generated by a process which does not adequately safeguard a basic right.' The indications are that as a result of the landmark ruling, changes are in the offing.

Possibilities for a new independent ruling body include the reorganisation of the Planning Inspectorate - currently under the auspices of DETR - into an independent body similar to the Irish Planning Board (where the chairman is appointed by the government but the members are selected from interest groups - the secretary of state, would have no power to overrule decisions); the setting up of an independent Environmental Court, which would absorb the Planning Inspectorate; or the creation of a separate division of the High Court to deal with the issues.

Simon Ricketts, a partner in the planning and environment group at City firm SJ Berwin, describes the decision as having a 'fundamental impact'.

'It's almost inevitable that the government will have to redraft the planning legislation,' he says.

'The whole process of intervention [by the secretary of state] at the moment is done very much on a discretionary basis - it needs to be much more open, as his conclusions always, inevitably, have some political element.'However, the impact of the decision will undoubtedly reach further than a re-examination of the role of the secretary of state, according to Mr Ricketts, who says that it will pave the way for other legal planning issues to come to court.He uses as an example the 'Battle of Bosworth Down', where he is representing a group of local residents in Wiltshire - including the singer Sting and his wife - who are mounting a legal challenge to the Ministry of Defence over its plans to build an air base on Salisbury Plain.

'At the moment, the government does not have to apply for planning permission to develop land that it owns,' he says, 'but this High Court decision means that all aspects of the system are being looked at afresh, including this one.' This can be, and often is, a positive thing, but the downside is that the time taken for planning applications to travel through the system has mushroomed in recent years, in large part because of the government's reform of the development planning system two years ago.

Tony Kitson, head of planning at City firm CMS Cameron McKenna, believes that although 'the correct procedures have to be followed', the sheer time that major projects take travelling through the system is crippling.'Measures were introduced supposedly to streamline the system,' Mr Kitson explains, 'but the opposite effect has resulted and the bureaucracy is growing.'The system for deciding applications is multi-tiered, with plans needing to be approved on a local level, a county level, and a regional level - the result being that 'you have a never-ending system of plans catching up with each other', Mr Kitson says.

'Everyone has to talk to each other, so it takes a long time for anything to happen.' Added to the multi-level application system is the time taken for public inquiries to complete - the Heathrow Terminal 5 inquiry closed last year after a mammoth 525 days, and the secretary of state can take anything from nine months to two years to reach a final decision on controversial projects.'Major planning decisions are by their very nature political,' explains Mr Kitson, who acted in the Terminal 5 hearing.

'Since 1997, the government has introduced a huge number of quasi-public consultancy bodies - such as Regional Development Agencies and Regional Chambers - agencies which are all superimposed on top of the existing system.

This means that everyone is now a consultant, but not much actually happens.'Frustrating as this can often be, a large part of the appeal of planning law lies in its close links with politics, and the resulting 'fluidity' of the planning system, as Mr Kitson describes it.

However, planning law differs from other, more remote, legal specialisms in that the fruits of lawyers' labours can be seen by the public on a day-to-day basis.'You see around you every day the issues that you're dealing with,' says Mr Ricketts.

'Planning is about the home where you live, the transport that gets you to work, the places you go shopping - you're forming the lives of future generations.'Mr Hardy agrees, and highlights the government's attitude towards greenfield development sites as a legal planning issue which directly affects thousands of lives.

'The government issued the most recent planning policy guidelines (PPG) regarding residential housing in March 1999, which were essentially a U-turn on its policy,' he explains.

'Instead of building on greenfield sites, the guidelines now instructed planners to build new houses on brownfield sites - many inspectors have read these guidelines as a veto on allowing any greenfield developments, which obviously affects a huge number of people wanting to buy houses.'It is these sort of issues which hold the appeal of planning law: the attempt to live if not in harmony with your surroundings, then at least in a comfortable compromise.'Land in the UK is a precious thing,' explains Mr Hardy.

'We're not blessed with huge wide open spaces of outback as the Australians are, so we have to be wise and careful about how we use the little land that we have.

Good planning enhances everyday living - you have only to look at some 1960s housing developments to see how bad planning can cause real social problems.' Planning solicitors seem to agree that the current climate is an exciting one for the planning system - the challenge to create environmentally sound yet publicly accessible developments for the new millennium is one that they seem to relish.

Whether warm beer and Sunday cricket will have a place in this brave new world, however, remains to be seen.