The Planning (Trees) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015

Citation, commencement and interpretation

1.—(1) These Regulations may be cited as the Planning (Trees) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015 and shall come into operation on 1st April 2015.

(2) In these Regulations—

“development value” means an increase in value attributable to the prospect of development and, in relation to any land, the development of it shall include the clearing of it.

“electronic communication” has the meaning assigned to it by section 4 of the Electronic Communications Act (Northern Ireland) 2001(1);

“land affected by the order” includes land adjoining the land on which the trees, groups of trees or woodlands to which the order relates are situated;

“order” means a tree preservation order;

“persons interested”, in relation to land affected by an order, means the owners and occupiers of the land;

(3) In these Regulations, and in relation to the use of electronic communications for any purpose of these Regulations which is capable of being carried out electronically—

(a) the expression “address” includes any number or address used for the purpose of such communications;

(b) references to notices, applications or other documents or to copies of such things include references to such documents or copies of them in electronic form.

(4) Paragraphs (5) to (8) apply where an electronic communication is used by a person for the purpose of fulfilling any requirement in these Regulations to give or send any form, map, notice or other document to any other person (“the recipient”).

(5) The requirement shall be taken to be fulfilled where the form, map, notice or other document transmitted by means of electronic communication is—

(a) capable of being accessed by the recipient;

(b) legible in all material respects; and

(c) sufficiently permanent to be used for subsequent reference.

(6) In paragraph (5), “legible in all material respects” means that the information contained in the notice or document is available to the recipient to no lesser extent than it would be if sent or given by means of a document in printed form.

(7) Where the electronic communication is received by the recipient outside the recipient’s business hours, it shall be taken to have been received on the next working day; and for this purpose “working day” means a day which is not a Saturday, Sunday or a public holiday.

(8) A requirement in these Regulations that any document should be in writing is fulfilled where that document meets the criteria in paragraph (5).

(9) In these Regulations any references to sections are references to sections of the Planning Act (Northern Ireland) 2011 unless otherwise stated.

(1)

2001 c.9 (N.I.) as amended by 2003 c.21 (N.I.)