The Housing Forum has responded to the Government’s consultation on Accelerated Planning.
You can read our response to the consultation in full here
Our members from across the housing sector are aware that the planning system is not currently working as well as it should be as set out in our two recent reports on planning.
The Housing Forum strongly supports the principle of better systems to ensure that the planning system is faster, and that timelines are more predictable for applicants. However, better resourcing of the planning service, and of local authorities more widely is crucial to addressing this – without better resourcing none of the government’s very laudable aspirations for a faster planning service are likely to be achieved.
We are also concerned that if local authorities have a financial incentive to determine some types of planning application efficiently, but not others, that the applications that aren’t able to go through the accelerated route may be deprioritised. There is very little detail in the consultation for how the additional funding received for an accelerated service can be guaranteed to deliver a faster service without resulting in a slower service for other types of application. Residential applications are not currently included for the Accelerated Planning Service, which is a big concern to the housing sector.
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