Stuart Andrew says decision-making process taking 鈥榬idiculous amount of time鈥�
The housing minister has admitted council planning departments are facing resourcing difficulties but pledged to tackle the issue and 鈥榝ree up planners to be planners鈥�.
Stuart Andrew, speaking at a 黑洞社区 Garden Communities event earlier this week, said he has heard the question of whether planners have the resources to deliver initiatives such as garden communities 鈥渁 lot鈥� since becoming housing minister in February.
Andrew said: 鈥淚 recognise there are constraints and there are difficulties. It鈥檚 taking a ridiculous amount of time to develop a local plan, we want to make it simpler, so those can be done in 30 months rather than in years.
鈥淭he second thing is we鈥檝e got a skills strategy that we are starting within the [levelling up, housing and communities] department to look at and identify the issues that exist within local planning authorities.鈥�
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The government is also looking to for major applications and a quarter for minor applications to try and put more money into the system.
He added: 鈥淭here will be things in the [levelling up] bill to increase planning fees, so there will be more money, but I recognize that this is an issue at the end of the day. We want to free up planners to be planners.鈥�
Official showed the speed of decision-making by councils hitting its lowest point for five years in the third quarter of last year, while a number of housebuilders have cited planning delays as .
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