Planning Matters

Anyone submitting a planning application in Monmouth may ask to present to the Town Council’s Planning Committee either as a pre-application or once an application has been registered by the planning authority, Monmouthshire County Council (MCC). Please contact the Town Clerk to arrange this. 

Once a planning application has been received, the planning authority, MCC, will normally post a planning notice in the area of the proposed development and/or write to nearby residents to inform them of the application in a form of a neighbour notification.

Anyone can receive alerts for planning applications by going to the homepage of MCC’s website, putting in their postcode in the ‘My Monmouthshire’ box on the left hand side, pressing ‘Go’ and following the instructions.

Once an application has been registered by MCC, it is available to view on the online planning portal and is open for public consultation and comment for a period of three weeks. Comments must be in writing and can be submitted online, by email or by post. All planning applications can be viewed on their website by using the search facility.

MTC’s Planning Committee will meet to consider all planning applications for Monmouth and endeavours to submit comments within the public consultation period.

MCC should decide whether to approve or refuse an application within 8 weeks of the application first being registered or 12 weeks for larger schemes. This is to allow other statutory consultees to respond including the Highways Authority, Environmental, Heritage, Wales Water and others.

If MCC exceed the timescale in deciding the application, the applicant has the right to make an appeal to the Planning Inspectorate for non-determination (although in reality this rarely happens because planning appeals often take months).

As the local planning authority, MCC has responsibility for developing the Local Development Plan (LDP). This is a document that sets out the priorities and policies for development within Monmouthshire and identifies specific locations for certain types of development. For example, through the site allocations policy, it will identify land for new housing and/or specify what type of development would be acceptable in certain areas of the town (such as industrial, retail etc). The policy can be viewed or an interactive map https://www.monmouthshire.gov.uk/planning-policy/interactive-local-development-plan-mapping/

Planning Policy Wales is the policy set by the Welsh Government which all planning documents (such as MCC’s LDP) and decisions must conform with. This policy should also be considered in conjunction with Future Wales National Plan 2040 adopted in February.

When deciding on an application, MCC must take account of the individual merits of each application, whether there is any precedent, and whether it is in accordance with the above planning policies.