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

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what estimate he has made of the average cost to the public purse of a request for him to call in a planning application in each of the last five years.

Very few planning applications are called in each year - an average of only 8 cases in each of the last five years. In all these cases the parties who take part in the planning inquiry are expected to meet their own costs in preparing and presenting evidence. The cost to the public purse is therefore limited. It varies considerably between cases, depending on factors including the complexity of each project and the length of the planning inquiry, and whether there is any litigation following the issue of a decision.