Response to Accelerated Planning consultation

There were 36 questions to respond to covering a range of proposals. In summary, we acknowledged that IF implemented sensibly, on a modest scale and for applications with few complications, it could work BUT otherwise it would likely make things worse in the processing of all planning applications – causing a diversion of resources in Local Authorities when many are having problems establishing a full complement of planning staff. We made the point that most large schemes will have been many months, and most likely years in the making. So, reducing the limit from the current 13 weeks to 10 weeks for the determination of eligible applications is almost irrelevant. We emphasised that meaningful pre-application engagement with the local community should be strongly encouraged and that in our experience the main cause of delay is that almost all planning applications for major developments run materially counter to adopted local plan policies in one or more respects.