Planning rules' 'perverse' result

Targets aimed at speeding up English planning decisions may have led councils to reject more developments, says a spending watchdog.

The National Audit Office said a 13-week target for decisions had resulted in some "perverse consequences".

Decisions made within 13 weeks nearly doubled between 2003 and 2008 - 98% of rejections met the target but only 49% of approvals, in 100 councils surveyed.

The government rejected any suggestion there was a bias towards rejections.

The report said decisions made, within the target 13 weeks, on developments of 10 homes or more rose from 37% in 2002-3 to 67% in 2007-8.

But it said approvals took on average more than 25 weeks.

'Speedier decisions'

Previous estimates have put the cost of planning delays to the economy at £2.7bn a year and the government is giving grants worth £68m a year to councils to speed up applications.

The report said the grant, plus a target of 60% of decisions on big residential developments to be made within 13 weeks had "succeeded in ensuring that authorities give a higher priority to taking speedier decisions".

"Nationally, an increasing proportion of decisions have been rejections"
NAO report

The NAO noted it did not specify whether the developments - of 10 homes or more - were rejected or approved.

In the 11 authorities examined, official figures showed 62% were decided upon within the target time.

But the NAO said only 49% of approvals were made within that timescale, while 98% of rejections were done in 13 weeks.

"Nationally, an increasing proportion of decisions have been rejections, with 34% of decisions being rejections in 2007-8 compared to 26% in 2002-3," it said.

'Lack of incentive'

The report said targets had given councils an incentive to speed up applications - but only recorded the number of decisions which met the 13-week target, not the average number of weeks it took to reach a decision.

It said there had been some "perverse consequences" as councils focused on meeting the targets.

Developers had complained some councils put off validating their applications, which would effectively begin the 13-week period.

"We reject any suggestion the planning system is biased towards rejections"
Department for Communities and local government

Councils could reject plans or get developers to withdraw them then re-submit them at a later date, to meet the target, the report said.

The target meant there was an incentive to "attach unresolved issues" as conditions when granting permission in order to get it through quicker.

Bursary scheme

And plans that missed the 13-week target tended to face a further 27.6 week wait on average in the authorities it studied, due to "a lack of incentive" to deal with them once the target was missed.

The report also said that a bursary scheme to boost the number of people taking post-graduate planning courses had contributed towards a doubling of students.

But it said pre-application discussions, taken up by 87% of councils surveyed, took an "inconsistent approach". Developers complained they often spoke to junior staff in the first stages, then different staff when they actually submitted their plans.

Edward Leigh, the Conservative chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, which oversees the work of the National Audit Office, said: "The system is biased towards rejection of applications and, for those schemes that are approved, the whole process takes too long."

But a spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government said: "We reject any suggestion the planning system is biased towards rejections."

He said the £1bn housing and planning delivery grant funded councils on the basis of the number of completed homes they had approved.

"The NAO praises the department for setting a real financial incentive to reach quicker decisions on planning applications and our 13-week target has delivered a dramatic improvement in local authority performance," he said.

But he added that the target was to be replaced "with an alternative performance measure" that would help save £300m, following the recent Killian Pretty review into planning.