What if some of the questions don’t apply?
What happens where some questions are not applicable to a particular development?
The Checklist has been drawn up to cover the majority of applications, therefore it is possible that there will be questions that do not apply in some instances. Each question includes the facility for the Developer team to indicate that they do not believe it to be applicable to the development proposal being prepared. Questions which are marked “not applicable” are noted in the scoring overview to provide a “prompt” for users of the tool to note that the issue covered in the question has not been addressed.
Where a pre-application discussion takes place, the Developer and Local Planning Authority can assess whether this is the case. If it proves to be not applicable, then it may be appropriate to mitigate through improving performance on other issues.
If there is no pre-application discussion, the Developer team can still indicate that they believe the issue to be not applicable and should provide details as to why this is the case in the “justification” box provided. This rationale can then be checked by the Development Control officer and Planning Committee when the planning application is processed.