Out-Law News 1 min. read
27 Jul 2012, 3:56 pm
The UK Statistics Authority figures reveal that despite a rush of applications ahead of the introduction of the London Mayoral Community Infrastructure Levy in April, the number of applications has barely changed in the last year.
Richard Ford, a planning expert at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that "the pre NPPF and London Mayoral CIL rush for some schemes was effectively cancelled out by some of the weaker sectors of the economy".
"The figures show that there are still relatively strong activity levels in London and the South East and the Olympic effect will be a boost too," said Ford. "Residential and food retail nationally is in decent shape and infrastructure is strong. But there are still lower levels of activity in other sectors and delays for major projects remain a problem as the figures show. This is at least a better overall performance than GDP."
In the year ending March 2012 district planning authorities decided 57% of major applications within a 13 week period. This represents a 9% drop compared to the number of major planning applications that were decided within 13 weeks in the previous year.
The number of minor applications that were decided within eight weeks dropped by 4% in the year ending March 2012 to 75%, compared to the same period the year before. However the number of "other applications" that were decided within eight weeks increased by 4% in the year ending March 2012, compared to the same period the year before.
District planning authorities received 477,800 planning applications during the year ending in March 2012, which represented a 1% drop in applications when compared to the same period in 2011. There was also a 1% drop in the number of planning applications decided by district planning authorities for the year ending in March 2012, which fell to 434,900, compared to the same period for 2011.
There was an increase in the number of planning applications decided and granted during the first three months of 2012, compared to the same period in 2011.
District planning authorities decided 100,400 planning applications in the first three months of 2012, which represents a 4% increase compared to the same period the previous year. District planning authorities also granted 81,500 permissions during the first three moths of this year, which is a 4% increase when compared to the number of permission granted for same period in 2011.
