The average time it takes for planning for decisions is over a year in some of the worst performing planning authorities, no doubt denting efforts by the government to build the promised 1.5m new homes this Parliament.
Richmondshire Local Planning Authority, Brecon Beacons National Park, South Somerset, and Stockton-on-Tees are taking in excess of 12 months to make decisions on applications for more than one dwelling according to development site sourcing firm Searchland who track the average planning decision time in days on a quarterly basis across each local planning authority in Britain. At 415 days Richmondshire sits top of the worst performing areas, followed by The Brecon Beacons National Park with an average of 400 days to make a decision. South Somerset ranks third in this respect with an average time of 398 days.
Middlesbrough, Monmouthshire, Liverpool, Broadland, Bracknell Forest, South Norfolk, and Darlington make up the remainder of the Top 10 worst performing areas.
Brecon Beacons National Park, South Norfolk, South Somerset, Stockton-on-Tees and Darlington are amongst the Local Planning Authorities who have also seen the largest increases in the average time it takes to make a planning decision; a table topped by Carlisle with an average decision time of 297 days in 2024, up 163 days on 2023.
The top five best performing Local Planning Authorities were North York Moors National Park (57 days), Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (59 days), Northumberland National Park (64 days), Watford (69 days) and North Ayrshire (71 days); with the most improved areas including Knowsley, Camden and Portsmouth.
Across the country there was no overall change to average decision times from 2023 to 2024, sitting at 168 days but, says co-founder of Searchland, Hugh Gibbs with around half of all planning authorities seeing increases in decision times, more needs to be done to smooth the progress of decision making.
“Earlier this year, the government pledged to implement sweeping reforms to help cut the red tape from the planning process, improving the speed at which planning decisions are approved. It’s clear that such reforms are badly needed… If Labour has any chance of hitting the ambitious housing delivery targets set last year, addressing the initial bottleneck caused by the planning decision process is vital.”
