Comment
Consultation on planning fee increases: a necessary step to deliver a better service?
On the 28 February 2023, the Government rolled out their next round of planning consultations entitled ‘Increasing planning fees and performance: technical consultation[1]’ which set out proposals to increase planning fees and to improve capacity, capability and performance within local planning authorities. Associate Director, Henny Handley explains the proposed changes.
Well, quite simply they are seeking ways to increase funding of the local authority planning services in order to deliver a better service. This may well be music to our ears, as consultants and developers, but what will it cost and who will have to foot the bill?
What is the proposed increase?
The Government claim that currently there is an estimated shortfall of £225 million a year for providing a planning application service in local authorities. Therefore, by increasing fees, they are seeking to address the shortfall and allow for the funding to be invested directly back into local authorities to increase efficiency.
For planning application fees alone, they are proposing an increase of 35% on major applications and 25% on all other applications. This will seek to fill in the current deficit and allow for any surplus funds to be reinvested into the planning system. With the last fee increase being back in January 2018, these proposals have been a long time coming. However, the current consultation goes further than just increasing fees.
No more ‘free go’s’
Another headline proposed change is to do away with the option to have a ‘free go’ on applications within one year of the first submission.
The justification for this is that in some instances people are using the free go to circumnavigate the pre-application advice services, and instead use the statutory processes of an application to consult and subsequently determine a formally submitted application.
However, of course there are instances where free go’s are used in order to address concerns raised, perhaps at committee, that could not have been foreseen during the course of the application process. Is it really fair to make an applicant pay the full planning fee again?
The consultation does mention the possibility of a ‘partial free go’ but the detail of how this would work is not set out. Therefore, one can merely speculate on the detail, however, it would seem far more proportionate to the process to, at the very least, receive a reduced fee on subsequent applications given the local authorities’ existing knowledge of the site and proposals.
The Planning Guarantee
One alternative to this would be to rely on the wonderfully named ‘Planning Guarantee’. The Planning Guarantee already exists and allows an applicant to claim a refund on an application should it fail to be determined within 26 weeks of submission. Under the current guidance, the 26 weeks would not be applicable where an extension of time has been agreed between the applicant and the local authority. The current consultation seeks to refine this process further by holding local authority performance to account more. Therefore, they propose that on applications with 8 week determination periods, the Planning Guarantee period will be reduced to 16 weeks. On 13 week applications, the period will remain as 26 weeks.
Holding local authority performance to account
The consultation document also refers to the introduction of better metrics in order to hold local authority performance to account, and suggests that even where extensions of time are agreed, a local authority should still be assessed on the number of applications determined within the statutory time frames. In addition to this, the consultation goes on to set out a number of possible ways to monitor local authority performance including average speed of decision-making, quality of decision making, extension of times, backlog, planning enforcement and decisions made by planning committee. Yes, that’s right. They are even considering monitoring the number of committee level decisions that refuse applications against officer recommendation. It doesn’t, however, set out what the repercussions would be where a local authority falls short on their, as yet, stated targets.
The final part of the consultation suggests introducing a ‘Customer Experience’ metric that “could be based on a standardised customer satisfaction survey which focuses on the overall quality and timeliness of both the pre-application service and the decision-making service.” Well, I can think of a few occasions I would have relished the ability to fill in one of those! But joking aside, for an authority to be held to account is an important part of the process, particularly if they are to be in receipt of a hefty increase in planning fees.
What about recruitment?
The shortage in planning officers and other specialist technical staff at local authorities is being felt more than ever, affecting decision making outcomes and quality. The consultation states that “we want to provide local planning authorities with additional resources to deliver an effective planning service, facilitated by skilled and experienced planners and other technical specialists.” Disappointingly, the consultation is lacking in tangible solutions to these challenges. This issue has been in the limelight for years (see for example the 2008 report “Government Response to the Communities and Local Government Committee’s report: Planning Matters – labour shortages and skills gaps ”)
Recent commentary on moral and resources challenges in the public sector have clearly not gone unnoticed, but we would want to see more proactive solutions to addressing these long running issues from the Government, as more money alone will not ‘fix’ it.
To conclude, any investment in time and resources into local planning authorities is most welcomed as they are clearly struggling at present. Time will tell which of these changes subsequently get implemented, however, it would be safe to assume that we won’t get something for nothing. If performance is to improve at local level then someone will have to foot the bill, and needless to say that will inevitably fall on the applicant.
For more information on the consultation or how the proposed changes might affect you please contact Henny Handley.
28 March 2023