The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) is holding a consultation on proposals to raise the percentage of major planning applications that should be determined in the given time limit to prevent local planning authorities (LPAs) being classified as an ‘under-performing’, with the consultation closing on 4 May 2014.
Planning Portal writes
The proportion of major planning applications that English local planning authorities will need to determine within the statutory period to avoid being classified as ‘under performing’ could increase from 30 to 40 per cent under new proposals by the Government.
That higher threshold could be raised further ‘at a future stage’, the consultation document prepared by the Department for Communities and Local Government has highlighted.
The Government’s designation policy was introduced by the Growth and Infrastructure Act in May last year. If a local authority is designated as underperforming, developers can choose to submit planning applications for major developments to the Planning Inspectorate for determination instead of the council.
The consultation paper said the higher 40 per cent threshold would be used for the next round of designations in October 2014.
The consultation document spells out the criteria for both designation and exemption. It sets tests which would be applied where an authority threatened with under-performing classification could claim that ‘exceptional circumstances’ made a designation ‘unreasonable’.
DCLG has made it clear that authorities which deal with an average of no more than two applications for major development over the two-year long assessment period would be exempt from designation based on their speed of decisions.
The department said that since the policy was first announced there had been a ‘positive improvement in the percentage of applications for major development decided on time, up from 57 per cent when the legislation was introduced in October 2012 to 69 per cent in the July-September quarter in 2013’.
