Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of potential steps to increase provision of (a) court time and (b) relevantly skilled members of the judiciary to ensure the timely management of legal proceedings on complex planning disputes.

The Planning Court was established in 2014 and has greatly increased the speed in which planning cases are dealt with.

A dedicated cadre of lawyers and judiciary have been appointed to deal expediently with all significant planning cases.

The Criminal Courts and Justice Act 2015 introduced a permission stage in applications for statutory review, to remove unmeritorious statutory challenges to planning decisions as early as possible.

Current statistical data shows that the average time taken for a planning case to be dealt with in the Planning Court has reduced from 46.9 weeks in February 2014 to 25.9 weeks in March 2016.