Background to the myth
'The current debate on planning has talked of the town hall officials who take for ever with those planning decisions" and a slow and prescriptive planning regime. Planning Minister Greg Clark commits to speeding up applications that get stuck in the system.
Evidence base
- Councils as a whole meet or exceed the 8 or 13 week targets set for them by the government, despite reductions in resources. DCLG, Planning Application Statistics
- Since 2009, the Planning Inspectorate has slashed the average time taken to determine householder appeals from 19 to 8 weeks. PINS, 2010/11: Table 1.1
- What appear to be delays in planning are not always down to the planning authority or even the planning system. The development industry often conflates planning with other consent regimes, such as licensing or environmental permits.
- The World Bank's Doing Business Report 2013's topic dealing with construction permits looks at how difficult it was to build a warehouse in 185 countries. It ranks the UK as the 3rd best in the G8 and 20th best in the world.
Our view
The overall development process in England is among the quickest in western Europe. However, it is recognised that the part of this related to processing planning applications is relatively slow: this is because of the nature of the UK property law faster European and American zoning systems are less flexible and remove community influence from the process
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