Councils reject planning applications to secure funding

The National Audit Office (NAO) is asserting that councils are rejecting planning applications in order to meet Government targets that offer rewards for speeding up the process.

In a report published this week, the public spending watchdog suggests that targets demanded to qualify for grant funding actually encourage local authorities to reject planning applications, especially the more complex ones.

The Government has made £68 million a year available to help councils speed up the planning process and deal with applications within 13 weeks.

However, according to the NAO, successful applications for major residential schemes have been taking almost 26 weeks to approve.

Some authorities are, therefore, meeting the target period of 13 weeks by rejecting applications or encouraging developers to withdraw applications, as even when an application is rejected or dropped, they are still eligible for the funding.

The Department for Communities and Local Government, which is responsible for awarding the grants, has rejected the findings of the NAO report but is apparently reviewing its programme of incentives for council planning departments.

Meanwhile, the Government’s target of building three million homes by 2020 remains, despite the fact that new housing starts are down to 135,000 in 2008, their lowest level since 1924.

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