Planning departments must be properly resourced, says RTPI

Swift and accurate planning decisions are a crucial element in delivering much-needed growth and the increase in fees by the Government is designed to support this function, said the RTPI, the organisation which represents planners in the UK.

“The proposal to increase fees is welcome, but councils need to make sure that the additional money ensures planning departments are adequately resourced," said Colin Haylock, president of the RTPI.
 
There is increasing pressure on planning authorities, over and above the function of processing planning applications, the RTPI said, and they must be properly resourced to ensure they don't impede growth.

Planning authorities need the resource to update local plans, support the needs of neighbourhood planning and to resource development management, the RTPI said. Authorities also need the resource to implement and adapt to new changes, such as the National Planning Policy Framework and the Community Infrastructure Levy.

"Swift and accurate planning decisions are a crucial element in delivering much-needed growth and the increase in fees by the Government is designed to support this function," the RTPI said. "Whilst local government faces difficult choices, the Government’s clear intention is that council planning departments should be suitably resourced."

"Under resourced planning departments are a brake on growth,” it said.

The Government launched a consultation on plans to allow local planning authorities to set their own planning fees in November 2010, with an aim of decentralising the system. However the recent ministerial statement did not address whether the Government intends in the longer term to decentralise fees. 

The planning fee proposals aimed to reduce the number of planning applications that have to be subsidised by the local authority, and therefore by local taxpayers. The consultation documents showed that the majority of councils received less in planning fees than they spent processing applications.

 “As Minister for decentralisation I think decisions should be taken as locally as is reasonable," said Greg Clark at a planning seminar. "However, it becomes unreasonable if you couldn’t get an answer as to how much fees are now going to be. It turned out to be very difficult to discover what fees would be.”

“It’s an area where, having called for greater decentralisation, we’re not actually in a position to introduce it,” he said.

"Our primary consideration is that the planning system is resourced adequately, not how this is achieved, the RTPI said. "Nevertheless, the Institute will be pressing Government for greater clarity on its longer term intentions on fee setting."