Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps his Department is taking with local authorities to improve the time taken to process planning applications.

We are taking action to speed up determinations for planning applications in a number of ways. Reforms in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act seek to streamline the development management process and support decisions which are timely, transparent, and of high quality.

The Government has also recently increased planning fees and provided a range of new funding streams through the Government’s capacity and capability programme, including the £29 million Planning Skills Delivery Fund to provide local planning authorities with additional resources needed to deliver a high quality and timely planning service.

In addition to this, on 6 March the Government launched an Accelerated Planning Service consultation. This sets out measures to offer a new application route with accelerated decision dates for major commercial applications and fee refunds wherever these are not met. It also includes measures to more closely monitor the performance of local planning authorities in making decisions within statutory periods rather than using extension of time agreements.