Minister calls on councils to meet 12-month planning guarantee

Councils will be expected to deliver on a “Planning Guarantee” under which no planning application should take longer than 12 months to reach a decision, including any appeal, Planning Minister Greg Clark has said.

“At the moment too many applications get stuck in the system for too long, leaving people in planning limbo,” Clark claimed.

But it is understood that the number of planning applications which would have been covered by the guarantee in 2010/11 – 3,200 – accounted for just 0.7% of the total.

The Minister said the “Planning Guarantee” was part of government measures to deliver a simpler, swifter planning system and create a level playing field for all applications, “whether big or small”.

Local authorities will be expected to publish information at least quarterly on their performance against the guarantee.

Clark said the government would consult this autumn on the guarantee and on reducing the amount of paperwork required to accompany planning applications.

The Minister said: “The planning guarantee will help remove the uncertainty from the system for communities and ensure that every application, big or small, is dealt with quickly and fairly."