By Rebecca Bakewell, Assistant Planner at Fisher German, and Nial Casselden, Associate Partner at Fisher German
Planning has been in the news a great deal recently, and mostly for the wrong reasons.
Political battle lines have been drawn around housing delivery and the green belt, and amongst all this is the issue of resourcing and delays in council planning departments. The system is perceived as slow, cumbersome and ‘broken’.
This is hugely frustrating and increases uncertainty and risk for landowners and developers deciding whether to invest in a development project. This is the last thing developers need when costs are ever-increasing due to inflation and other factors.
Although the picture is uneven across the country, in general, there are significant delays in determining planning applications and providing pre-application advice. In some places, the delays can extend to years.
Planning law requires councils to determine applications within 13 weeks for major applications and eight weeks for minor applications. More recently it is becoming a rare occurrence to receive a planning decision within these time periods. This is a widespread issue with multiple local planning authorities experiencing backlogs of applications caused by a combination of a lack of resources and staffing issues.
Ever since the performance league tables and ‘designation’ process was introduced, it has become more common for councils to request extensions of time to enable them to determine applications beyond the eight or 13-week period.
Michael Gove recently wrote to 10 authorities to warn that their poor performance could lead to them being stripped of planning powers. Many other councils are also perilously close to the threshold.
There can be delays of weeks to simply have an application validated and allocated to a Planning Officer. In one authority, there was a delay of up to 232 days before an application would even land on an officer’s desk! Whilst not all Councils are this backlogged, the majority are working to delayed timescales. It is worth bearing this in mind that the planning process could take longer than anticipated.
Of course, the planning process is probably as complex as it has ever been, with many different elements to deal with. It can be a minefield if not approached properly. There is no magic solution, but steps can be taken to help mitigate the risk and expedite the process.
These include measures such as seeking pre-application advice from the local planning authority, ensuring requirements of the local and national validation lists are met, ensuring time-sensitive surveys such as ecology surveys are conducted in advance, and providing as much additional information up-front to reduce delays in discharging conditions.
A further way to speed up the process is using a Planning Performance Agreement (PPA). It’s a form of project management that allows applicants and local planning authorities to agree on timescales and resources to handle particular applications subject to a further fee. It is worth
checking whether the council has a PPA protocol in place, which may include a menu of fees for different types of projects. This can help to shortcut the process and provides much greater certainty.
Of course, obtaining the advice and support of an experienced professional planning consultant from the outset is critical, as they will be able to set everything out and devise the best strategy for taking the project forward with greater certainty and manageable risk.
