Press Releases

In response to the launch of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, Our Chief Executive Melanie Leech CBE said: 

“There’s a lot to welcome in the latest stage of the Government’s planning reforms. We called for strategic planning, easier brownfield development and a more certain local planning process in our planning manifesto ‘Building More, Building Better’ last year and it seems that Government have listened. Planning at the ‘larger-than-local’ level should mean that housing targets are allocated more sensibly, and that there’s better planning for employment uses. As part of that there should be a standard method for planning for jobs so that needs are assessed consistently around the country. However, it is vital that all of this is adequately resourced in the forthcoming Spending Review if it is to deliver transformational change in the planning system.   

"Greater delegation of planning decisions to planning officers and the better functioning of planning committees will, when combined with wider local government reform, help to improve decision-making and better deploy resource in the system by freeing up committees to deal with larger, more complex developments.

"We also support measures to help developers meet their environmental obligations - but want to understand how this will work in practice. We should always aim to mitigate negative environmental impacts within the development site but recognise this isn’t always possible.

"The recent changes to Compulsory Purchase Orders in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act haven’t really been tested yet, so we need to proceed cautiously with further changes and make sure we do it in a way which fairly balances needs of communities with rights of landowners and stimulates rather than inhibits development.

"We’re especially pleased about the proposed measures to reduce the friction costs in the development approval process by making the various statutory consultees more focused on supporting, rather than preventing, growth. While they serve important functions, statutory consultees are often under-resourced and don’t always respond to applications in a timely manner, or indeed see it as a priority to do so – this has to change if Government is going to meet its housing targets and get investment in the new workplaces and community infrastructure that we need.”