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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to the Planning Inspectorate Performance update – April 2025, published on 25 April 2025, what steps she is taking to reduce the median decision time.

The Planning Inspectorate's Strategic Plan commits to removing all casework backlogs and meeting all Ministerial targets by 2027. Casework including nationally significant infrastructure projects, local plan examinations, critical Secretary of State casework, appeals against refusal of planning permission and appeals against enforcement notices are currently being prioritised over casework of lower general intrinsic economic value.

It is, for example:

• Meeting all statutory timeframes for national infrastructure applications;
• Increasingly deciding planning appeals by hearing and inquiry in around 26 weeks (the Ministerial measure), having already cleared a backlog of casework;
• Beginning to decide enforcement appeals by hearing and inquiry in around 26 weeks (the ministerial measure) for the first time in many years, as it clears a long standing backlog of casework; and
• Reducing the total number of live planning appeals by written representations every month (the highest volume area of casework)

The Inspectorate is implementing actions to maintain performance in these areas performing well and to improve end-to-end times for other casework including by:

• Focusing available capacity of both salaried and contract (non-salaried inspectors) on reducing the amount of open appeals. The number of open planning appeals by written representations has reduced significantly during 2024 and continues to reduce.
• Using contract (non-salaried) inspectors to the full extent of their availability and expanding the range of casework they determine.

In addition, the Inspectorate has designed and developed a new digital Appeals Service currently in Beta phase. This new service improves the process for submitting appeals, including reducing the number of invalid appeals submitted. In turn, this reduces the number of validation checks required and is speeding up the time taken to validate appeals. The new service has been expanded to cover all local planning authority areas. In five pilot local authority areas the digital Appeals Service is now being used to progress the appeal from receipt through to decision. This provides an interface for Local Planning Authorities and appellants to manage appeals and automate notifications which are expected to save time for participants, improve their experience of the appeals service and be a foundation for further improvements.

The Planning Inspectorate is an Arm's Length Government Body with responsibility for allocation of resources, prioritisation and overall operational performance. The Inspectorate publishes updates on its performance on its website regularly.