Mr. Dave Walsh:

It is an important process. One could argue that, for small-scale CPOs, it is a lot of time and effort. Equally, however, the CPO process is impacting on people's lives and on their constitutional property rights to a certain extent. It is important that people feel they have not just a written opportunity but also a chance to understand and meet the planning inspector as well. We used to make oral hearings mandatory but in some cases the board now has the opportunity to decide if it has enough information on hand without having a hearing in every instance.