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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of (a) urban design and (b) architecture skills in local planning authorities; and what steps she is taking to improve those skills.

Supporting local planning authorities to attract, retain and develop skilled planners is crucial to ensuring they provide a proactive, efficient planning service for local communities and that new developments are well designed and facilitate local growth.

The government appreciates that planning departments across the country are experiencing challenges with recruitment, retention, and skills gaps and that in many cases these issues are having a negative impact on service delivery.

At the Budget last year, the Chanceller announced a £46 million package of investment into the planning system as a one-year settlement for 2025-2026.

Our manifesto committed us to appointing 300 new planning officers into LPAs. We are on track to meet that commitment through two routes, namely graduate recruitment through the Pathways to Planning scheme run by the Local Government Association and mid-career recruitment through Public Practice.

On 27 February 2025, the government announced funding to support salaries and complement graduate bursaries. Further information can be found in the Written Ministerial Statement I made on 27 February 2025 (HCWS480).

On 25 February 2025, the draft Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) (Amendment and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2025 were agreed. These regulations increase planning fees for householder and other applications, with a view to providing much-needed additional resources for hard-pressed LPAs.

More broadly, the Department’s established Planning Capacity and Capability programme is also developing a wider programme of support, working with partners across the planning sector, to ensure that LPAs have the skills and capacity they need, both now and in the future, to modernise local plans and speed up decision making, including through innovative use of digital planning data and software.

Lastly, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill includes provisions that will allow LPAs to set planning fees or charges at a level that reflects the individual costs to the LPA to carry out the function for which it is imposed and to ensure that the income from planning fees or charges is applied towards the delivery of the planning function.