Asked by: Greg Smith (Conservative - Buckingham)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what recent estimate he has made of the acreage of farm land used for (a) housing development, (b) commercial development, (c) solar panels and (d) battery storage in each of the last five years.
Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)
Figures for 2019 onwards are derived using a revised methodology and are expressed as three-year totals. They are not directly comparable with figures for earlier years. Accordingly, the available information for the last three years for which figures are available for (a) and (b) is set out in the table below. Separate figures for (c) and (d) are not available.
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| Amount of land changing use (acres) (a) | |
Period (b) | Change of use: | ||
| Agriculture to residential | Agriculture to Industry and commerce | |
2019 to 2022 (c) | 9,854 | 3,168 | |
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Source: DLUHC Land use change - hectarage statistics, (part of) Live Table P361 at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/land-use-change-hectarage-2019-to-2022 | |||
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Notes: |
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(a) Figures are published in hectares and have been converted into acres for this table. | |||
Asked by: Greg Smith (Conservative - Buckingham)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether it is the policy of the Planning Inspectorate Service to seek to discourage challenges by planning authorities against planning appeal decisions by the threat of incurring costs; and on how many occasions this occurred in the last ten years.
Answered by Rachel Maclean
Guidance on the award of costs in planning appeals is published here.
The Planning Inspectorate uses that guidance to support its decisions on costs awards, which can apply to any main party in the appeal if they behave unreasonably.
Parties in planning appeals and other planning proceedings normally meet their own expenses, but the costs regime exists in legislation to discourage unreasonable behaviour during the appeals process.
The Planning Inspectorate approaches all its decisions and recommendations openly, fairly and impartially, as expected of Tribunals.
In judicial review proceedings and court challenges it is common practice for the winning party to seek to recover their costs from the losing party - whether they are successful in doing so is a matter for the Judge. The Inspectorate does not systematically collect store data on the number of times costs are incurred.
Asked by: Greg Smith (Conservative - Buckingham)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what proportion of planning authority judicial review challenges to appeal decisions incur the award of costs against them.
Answered by Rachel Maclean
Guidance on the award of costs in planning appeals is published here.
The Planning Inspectorate uses that guidance to support its decisions on costs awards, which can apply to any main party in the appeal if they behave unreasonably.
Parties in planning appeals and other planning proceedings normally meet their own expenses, but the costs regime exists in legislation to discourage unreasonable behaviour during the appeals process.
The Planning Inspectorate approaches all its decisions and recommendations openly, fairly and impartially, as expected of Tribunals.
In judicial review proceedings and court challenges it is common practice for the winning party to seek to recover their costs from the losing party - whether they are successful in doing so is a matter for the Judge. The Inspectorate does not systematically collect store data on the number of times costs are incurred.