Requirements in 'Plans, drawings and supporting materials' for 'Development relating to the onshore extraction of oil and gas'

[James-Planningportal]

Couple of queries regarding this module, which is specific to this application type: https://github.com/digital-land/planning-application-data-specification/blob/main/generated/info_model/application/extraction-oil-gas.md#plans-drawings-and-supporting-materials

1. Do we need a separate duplicate list of supporting information?

The list of supporting documents is a duplicate requirement, that is already fulfilled by the 'Documents' component in the application fields module

2. Do any/all these documents need to be made available to the public by the applicant separately?

Is the inspection address simply the mineral authority offices or their website, or is there an expectation/requirement for the applicant to make physical and/or digital copies available elsewhere. If they are, then this should have options for both the online and offline locations.

Feedback from MHCLG policy (Stephen Borrows) was that "Where the form requires the applicant to provide details to where documents can be inspected is a bit of a strange one. This could be because some of this information would be considered sensitive (i.e. not in the public domain), so this is to inform the LPA where this information can be inspected – but I think including in the form is a bit of a clunky way of going about it. Be interesting to see how this is used in practice."

Therefore, would be interesting to review with Minerals Authorities to determine the specific requirement/use case here.

3. Is the PDF checklist provided by Planning Portal to accompany this application type still valid or necessary?

This document has been provided by Planning Portal since before it was privatised, so it definitely came from MHCLG (or predecessors) originally: https://ecab.planningportal.co.uk/uploads/1app/guidance/guidance_note-onshore_oil_gas.pdf

However, there is no current equivalent information in the government template, or minerals guidance.

If it is a useful item, then I would suggest that this module is the best place to collect such information

[colmjude]

I’ve had a look at the plans-drawings-supporting-materials module.

On the first point, I agree that supporting-documents looks repetitive because the application already has a full documents list. In this module it appears to be doing a narrower job: identifying the documents that are plans, drawings or supporting material relevant to this oil and gas application.

So I've made a small tweak to the module to make it clearer that's what is being asked for, rather than a full repeat of the provided documents.

That keeps the specification closer to the current form while we resolve the more important question about inspection-address and whether this section is a legacy form question that no longer has a clear purpose, or whether it reflects a specialist minerals-authority process.

As you suggest, that's one for policy folks and the minerals authority to confirm.

In particular, if the inspection address is where certain plans, drawings or supporting materials can be inspected, then the module may still need to list the documents that must be made available there. I’m reluctant to remove the field until we know that for sure, although the model may need reworking once we understand the process.

The main question to answer is:

1. What is inspection-address actually for: authority office or website, applicant-provided inspection location, or something else? And is it still needed?

Once we know that, we can answer:

2. What is the list of documents supposed to represent: all plans and drawings, or only specific documents to be inspected at the provided address?
3. Is the older Planning Portal checklist still current and useful enough to model?

I've added the Policy label to remind us to seek advice on this one.