Local Planning Authorities: Staffing Debate
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Lord Watts
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Local Planning Authorities: Staffing
Lord Watts Excerpts(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, we recognise this as a source of delays. In addition to the planning skills delivery fund, we have put in place the “planning super-squad”, backed by £13 million of funding. It deploys teams of specialists into planning authorities to accelerate the delivery of homes and developments.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, it certainly will not wash that, after 13 years of cuts, including to these departments, the Government then in the last two years start to increase it slightly. It will not compensate anything near what has been lost to local authorities in their planning and other departments.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, one of the things we have done in our recent changes is make provision for the indexing of planning fees going forward. That will ensure not only that local authorities will benefit from the substantial increase in fees that were put in place in December this year but that, on an annual basis, the value of those fees will be retained in future.