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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether he has made an assessment of the impact of the increase in planning fees under the Levelling up and Regeneration Act 2023 on the speed of granting planning permissions by local planning authorities.

Planning fees were increased on 6 December 2023. The Department has and I have made it clear that we expect local planning authorities to use the additional income generated by the fee increase in their planning services, so that the planning service benefits from more resources. This investment should lead to an improvement in the speed of decision-making in time.

The performance of all local planning authorities in relation to the speed and quality of decision-making is continuously monitored and reported quarterly through the Department’s live tables on planning application statistics. These can be viewed here.

We will use this information to assess the impact of the increase in planning fees, and will be very carefully monitoring in the months ahead.