CONSULTATION RESPONSE: Planning fees

Context

The Government is concerned that planning authorities lack resources and are consequently not performing as well as they could be. They have therefore consulted on proposals to increase planning fees.

The Housing Forum consultation response:

We are pleased the government recognising the resourcing issues within local authority planning departments and taking steps to address them. We welcome the proposals to increase fees and also the focus on other ways to improve planning performance discussed in the consultation. However, we note that improving performance is challenging in a situation of chronic under-funding of local authorities with sustained cuts to budgets for many years with no reduction in the statutory duties required of them, and indeed – for planning – an increase in what is required to be considered when determining planning applications.

Better resourcing for planning departments is clearly a big part the solution and there is definitely a role for higher fees within this. Our key asks are:

• It is vital that the fee increase results in improved performance and speed of planning decisions in order to help bring forward much-needed new housing.
• Ringfencing the fees to the local planning department is unlikely to be sufficient to ensure improvements, because the fee income alone will still be insufficient to support the planning department in full, and also because not all local planning authorities have a ‘planning department’ as such but rather have different planning functions located within different service areas.
• We broadly welcome the approach to monitoring performance, though think that some modification is needed to the proposed measures.

We are also aware that whilst the increase in fees is needed across the board to fund the planning system, there will be increased costs that fall on social housing providers and local authorities themselves when leading housing delivery. Additional funding for the social housing sector is vital to offset this increased cost.

The consultation also sought views on other ways in which government could help the local authority sector to streamline planning and increase improve efficiency.

We have identified the following skills gaps:

• Experienced planners who are able to handle large and complex applications
• Technological skills to help digitalise planning and move to more efficient data-sharing
• Legal and commercial expertise around S106 and CIL negotiations and viability appeals
• Urban design skills
• Ecology and biodiversity net gain, carbon reduction/ the newer green technologies
• Skills and understanding of planning by local authority councillors who sit on planning committees.

Other ways to build capacity in local authority planning departments include:

• Addressing the shortage of planners via increasing pay, support towards training, and adding planners back to the shortage occupation list. Addressing the image of planning and developing mentoring and shadowing schemes may also help.
• Downstream promotion of the skills needed for planning. This includes the inclusion of planning in the school geography curriculum and greater focus on planning in the Design, Surveying and Planning for Construction T-level, as well as development of apprenticeships to give more entry routes to the profession.
• Reducing the workload on planning departments via greater standardisation of systems and requirements including use of building regulations where appropriate, and a review of what stage in the process applicants are asked for different types of information to ensure it is realistic. Sharing resources between planning departments, and a pool of national-level expertise can also help with more specialist skills required (such as ecology).

Lastly, the consultation asks about how performance and community engagement can be improved.

• We encourage partnership working between local authorities, housing associations and housebuilders to bring sites forward to meet everyone’s needs and vision.
• Community engagement could be improved via more focus on the community at the pre-application stage where there is more potential to help shape a development.
• Planning consultation often fails to capture the views of a representative spread of the population. There should be more focus on ensuring that the views captured are representative of the population, and that efforts are made to engage with people who might speak on behalf of those who would move into new housing, or ultimately benefit from there being more housing such as those managing accommodation for the homeless and local employers.

We hope that this will come as part of a wider drive to improve resourcing of local authority planning departments and help build a culture of strong cooperative working arrangements between planners and planning applicants, driving up the quality of new housing and place-making to build the homes and communities of the future.

You can read our full response here