Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many holding directions he has issued under section 31 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015; how long on average those holding directions have lasted; and in which local authority areas those holding directions have been issued.

Holding directions are issued – in most cases by officials without ministerial involvement – to allow planning ministers to consider requests to call in planning applications. Holding directions usually expire when a decision is made on whether to call the application in. The department does not maintain records of expired holding directions and therefore cannot provide the information as requested.