The Housing Forum has responded to the Government’s consultation on increases to planning application fees. Our members across the housing sector are broadly supportive of the principle of higher planning fees in order to provide a better-resourced planning service. However, we do not see any measures in the proposals that give any confidence that the planning service would be better resourced, or that it would work more effectively.
We are therefore reluctant to support something that would increase the costs of housebuilding (including for social landlords too) at a time when high costs are threatening the viability of so many developments of much-needed new homes. For higher fees to bring about the improvements we need in the speed of the planning process, they need to be accompanied by a more comprehensive performance monitoring system.
Setting higher expectations from Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) must go hand in hand with supporting them to work more efficiently – both via the higher fees, and also by improvements in digitalisation and standardisation. For example, standardising the wording of S106 agreements via agreed templates would speed up this element of the process which is particularly prone to causing significant delays.
You can read our consultation response in full here.