Asked by: Grant Shapps (Conservative - Welwyn Hatfield)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what contingency plan his Department has to address increases in the time taken to process planning applications by local authorities.
Answered by Lord Barwell
Chapter 7 of the Technical consultation on the implementation of planning changes, published in February 2016, sets out our proposals to address delays in the processing of planning applications by local authorities. We are considering responses.
Asked by: Grant Shapps (Conservative - Welwyn Hatfield)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what estimate his Department has made of the cost to the economy of the time taken to process planning applications.
Answered by Lord Barwell
The Department published a study in 2009, Benchmarking the costs to applicants of submitting a planning application (http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120919132719/http:/www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planningandbuilding/pdf/benchmarkingcostsapplication.pdf), which sought to identify the typical financial costs to applicants associated with the submission of a planning application. Local planning authority expenditure on development control, which includes the costs of advice, the processing of applications, enforcement and regulations of other special topics, including minerals and waste control, is recorded by the Department in a statistical dataset published annually Local authority revenue expenditure and financing England: 2014 to 2015 individual local authority data – outturn - RO5 (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financing-england-2014-to-2015-individual-local-authority-data-outturn).
It is important that planning applications are determined in a timely and efficient manner. Local planning authorities can be designated as underperforming where they persistently fail to determine applications for major development on time, which has seen the proportion of major applications determined on time rising to an all-time high of 82 per cent, in the quarter ending 31 March 2016, since the regime was introduced in summer 2012. We plan to extend this regime to include non-major development.
Asked by: Grant Shapps (Conservative - Welwyn Hatfield)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, whether his Department plans to streamline planning procedures for smaller developments.
Answered by Lord Barwell
Small builders will soon be able to apply to their local planning authority for ‘permission in principle’ which will enable them to gain more upfront certainty on the suitability of small sites for housing-led development, before they need to develop detailed and often costly development proposals. This will reduce the risk for small local builders to enter the market.
Through the Neighbourhood Planning Bill introduced on 7 September, the Government proposes to reform and speed up the planning process by minimising delays caused by unnecessary or overly burdensome planning conditions. The Bill measures will ensure that pre-commencement planning conditions are only used by local planning authorities where they are absolutely necessary, and that applicants are in agreement before they are imposed.
The Government took powers in the Housing and Planning Act 2016 to enable us to extend to non-major planning applications the successful performance regime for major applications, which has seen the proportion of major applications determined on time rising from 57% in July to September 2012, the quarter in which the performance regime was first announced, to 82% in the most recent quarter, the highest figure on record.