27th July 2009, 01:51 PM
There are a lot of circumstances in which it is perfectly reasonable for planning authorities not to maintain their own HER, as long as they have access to one.
The first and most common one is that, of course, most HERs are traditionally maintained at County level, whereas most planning authorities are Districts. Several Districts are usually covered by one County HER, rather than each maintaining their own.
In Scotland, however, all planning authorities are Unitary. Last time I looked, there were some parts of the country where one Unitary authority maintains an HER that covers a wider area, providing the service to neighbouring authorities at a cost.
In the past, in England, there have been circumstances where authorities bought in HER services from private companies. For instance, Babtie Group used to run the Berkshire SMR, and after the break-up of the county several of the successor unitary authorities continued to buy the service for some time. I don't know of anywhere that is doing this at present, but as far as I am aware it worked fairly well (as well as most authority-run HERs and better than some that I could mention), and I can't see any reason other than ideaology why it couldn't be done again.
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished
The first and most common one is that, of course, most HERs are traditionally maintained at County level, whereas most planning authorities are Districts. Several Districts are usually covered by one County HER, rather than each maintaining their own.
In Scotland, however, all planning authorities are Unitary. Last time I looked, there were some parts of the country where one Unitary authority maintains an HER that covers a wider area, providing the service to neighbouring authorities at a cost.
In the past, in England, there have been circumstances where authorities bought in HER services from private companies. For instance, Babtie Group used to run the Berkshire SMR, and after the break-up of the county several of the successor unitary authorities continued to buy the service for some time. I don't know of anywhere that is doing this at present, but as far as I am aware it worked fairly well (as well as most authority-run HERs and better than some that I could mention), and I can't see any reason other than ideaology why it couldn't be done again.
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished