The Committee considered a report on a current consultation by the Government on ideas to speed up the process for making planning decisions, for which the deadline for responses was 1 May 2024.  An update report was tabled at the meeting containing suggested responses to the consultation questions.

The report stated that the consultation paper was generally looking at ways to restrict the use of extensions of time to the long-established 13 weeks for major applications and eight weeks for all other types of application, with a penalty requiring local planning authorities to refund fees if the target date was not met. The report explained that the consultation sought views on proposals for the following and explained them further:

• Introduce a new Accelerated Planning Service for major commercial applications with a decision time in ten weeks and fee refunds if this was not met.
• Change the use of extensions of time, including ending their use for householder applications and only allowing one extension of time for other developments, which linked to a proposed new performance measure for local planning authority speed of decision-making against statutory time limits.
• Expand the current simplified written representations appeals process for householder and minor commercial appeals to more appeals.
• Implement section 73B for applications to vary planning permissions and the treatment of overlapping permissions.

Resolved -   

That the proposed responses set out in the update report be used to respond to the consultation, subject to officers strengthening the responses by inclusion of relevant local evidence and data to support the arguments where available.