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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what performance targets apply to the Planning Inspectorate in respect of their time taken to (1) acknowledge appeals submitted, (2) undertake an appeal either by the written representation procedure or by a formal hearing, and (3) notify interested parties of the outcome of an appeal; and whether those targets are being met.

We are working hard on a number of fronts to improve our performance. One of the known challenges is recruiting the right number of inspectors. This has been a consistent issue for the Inspectorate over a number of years. In response to this, we are now developing different models for entry to the inspector workforce as well as procuring around 100 Non Salaried Inspectors and undertaking a further recruitment of Inspectors.

Through our transformation programme we are undertaking an end to end review of our processes, challenging the effectiveness of the technology that supports all our casework and looking forensically at our working practices. This work has already begun to deliver a significant improvement in performance, such as halving the time it takes to validate cases from over two weeks in 2017 to currently under one.