Plymouth City Council has adopted the Coastal Concordat for England, which sets out how regulatory and advisory bodies work with local planning authorities to deliver sustainable growth of the coastal zone. It provides a more efficient framework for coordinating the different processes and bodies involved in coastal development consents by reducing unnecessary duplication, streamlining assessments and increasing consistency of advice.
The concordat approach can be applied to applications that:
• span the intertidal area in estuaries and on the coast, and
• require multiple consents including both a marine licence and a planning permission from the local planning authority.
It doesn’t apply to projects that are purely terrestrial or that already have coordination mechanisms in place, for example National Significant Infrastructure developments.