Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what the average length of time was for a decision to be made on a planning application in each quarter since 2013.

The Government collects quarterly data on planning application decision times by local planning authorities, broken down by six time bands. This information is accessible at live table P120.

The Government has radically reformed the planning system to ensure that it operates efficiently in delivering badly needed sustainable development. Decision taking times have substantially improved: in the final quarter of 2012, 56% of major applications were determined on time, and following our changes to speed up and simplify processes by the final quarter of 2014 this had risen to 77%.