The Snagging List

Introduction

By common consensus there will a considerable increase in the submission of planning applications this year, certainly applications for residential development and certainly driven by applications on the Grey Belt.

Data published by the LPDF in February suggested a 160% increase in the number of planning applications to be submitted by it’s members between January and June 2025 compared to the number submitted between July and December 2024.

Since then evidence for the uptick has largely been anecdotal. I have certainly heard from several builders and promoters of an intention to make 4, 5 or 6 times more planning applications from strategic land portfolios this year than in recent years.

Empirical evidence is though also now starting to emerge.

MHCLG data published last month reveals that between January and March English LPAs received 6% more planning applications than the same quarter last year, bucking a stark downward trend since 2021 (some of this may though be due to an increase in householder applications before the fees for such rose).

I also spotted that Noble Francis, Economics Director at the CPA, shared online last week that UK brick deliveries, a useful proxy for housebuilding starts in the absence of monthly housebuilding starts data, were 10.6% higher in May than in April and 15.3% higher than a year ago.

The key point narrowly though is that if an increase in planning applications this year is to make a meaningful contribution to the Government's new home target within the parliamentary term, then these applications will need to be transacted an awful lot faster than applications have been transacted hitherto. According to recent research by Lichfields for the LPDF and Richborough, the average time taken to determine a major outline application has risen from 8 months in 2014 to two years in 2024. Perhaps most starkly, since 2019 it has been quicker to get an application determined by going to appeal than relying on the LPA, with PINS timescales demonstrably improved post-the Rosewell Review.

The key point more broadly is that this increase in planning applications affords an opportunity, looking beyond the big building blocks of the reform agenda that have gathered most attention over the past year or so, to get under the bonnet of the planning system’s rickety old engine.

That, the efficiencies to be found within development management, is the basis for episode 143 of the 50 Shades of Planning podcast, which I have called ‘The Snagging List’.

To inform it the episode, you might have seen, I posted the following call-for-evidence on LinkedIn and on the blog.

“We are not talking here about NDMPs and Stat Cons and modernising planning committees and the big ideas that are already on the agenda. We are talking about the nitty gritty. The detail. The things that, as planning managers or consultants submitting applications, or planning officers managing applications, drive you most crazy. We are not necessarily talking set piece policy or legal change, although we might be talking about policy or legislative tweaks here and there. We are talking about the low-effort practical levers you would you pull, or procedural buttons you would press, that would shave days, weeks or even months off of the typical planning application.”

Lots of people either commented on that LinkedIn post or shared their thoughts with me directly and this blog is an attempt to summarise all of those submissions and suggestions, and to mention everything that Andrew Taylor, Martin Hutchings, Emma Williamson, Alastair Parvin, Jacob Bonehill and Ros Eastman did not have time to during the hour-long recording.

The submissions and suggestions that I received reflected just how broad this topic is. I am grateful for them all, but have politely and respectfully eschewed those that related to, for example, BNG, CIL and the Use Classes Order, just so as to be able to focus on the key stages that a typical planning application will go through.

Pre-Amble

First things first, as Martin said in recording, improvements to development management are a two way street. Let us not focus solely on what happens when an application hits the LPA. Let us focus equally on applicants present the best quality applications.

Pre-Application

Fundamentally, how can applicants secure meaningful, substantive advice that includes input from relevant consultees? That is a huge question in and of itself.

Relatedly, how can consultees be prevented from running their own parallel but separate pre-application services?

A Written Ministerial Statement published by Matthew Pennycook made mention of a new performance regime and funding settlement for statutory consultees, and there could be an opportunity to link this, by way of a more regularised pre-application service and PPA regime, with whatever locally-set fees come to be.

A Statement of Common Ground was suggested as a way of bringing all of that together.

Other issues raised in relation to pre-application included vague local validation checklists (which make the case for a new national one); variations across LPAs as to hard copies of submission material being required; LPAs waiting until an application is validated before soliciting third party assistance (when there is a clear commitment to an application and a clear need for such assistance); and the need for an applicant and the LPA to agree the description of development (linked to Hillside-related issues).

Validation

Since the dawn of time and likely until the end of days, discussions about the validation of planning applications lurch between the need for clarity and consistency on one hand, and the need for discretion on the other, recognising that sometimes something might be required that might not be on a list.

It does seem to be the case though that local requirements have grown in response to requests and demands from consultees and again, linked to the afore-mentioned statutory consultee review, there is an opportunity to push issues covered by other regulatory regimes back into those other regimes so that the LPA is not doing the consultee’s job for them.

It does also seem to be the case that validation checklists have become static documents rather than living documents that can be updated on a rolling basis.

Looking ahead, how can validation speak directly to back-office systems that draw on geospatial and policy data? For as long as applicants are having to break up large documents into sections of no more than 10MB though, those kinds of questions seem a long way away from being answered let alone asked.

Perhaps in the meantime applications could submit a parallel checklist to signpost to validation officers which documents address which requirements.

Application

A number of seasoned LPA figures made the case for an immediate triage of applications once validated:

• This looks good as it is, is policy compliant, and should be approved as soon as possible;
• This looks awful, is not policy compliant, and should be refused as soon as possible; and
• This is ok, but could be better and it is worth putting some time in to improving it.

Interestingly in relation to the latter, I am hearing more and more about LPAs that will not amend applications once they are submitted and so invite their withdrawal and resubmission, which applicants may have been more amenable to before the ability to make a free-go application was withdrawn.

The benefits of a template planning statement (linked to template delegated and committee reports) were extolled by a number of contributors. These, it was suggested, could highlight the compliance or non-compliance of an application with policy and, perhaps linked to a Statement of Common Ground, highlight both the benefits of a proposal and the areas of contention.

Consultation

In relation to public consultation, by common consensus the requirement to publicise certain applications in the local newspaper should be consigned to the pre-modern age.

Emma makes the point during the podcast recording that whilst the regulations say that applications should be publicised by site notice or letters, often LPAs feel obliged to do both.

As Emma also said the response rate to what can be thousands of letters can be less than 10%. It must surely be possible for local residents to sign up to alerts for applications within their area of interest.

When site notices are appropriate, it was suggested, can they be more visible, perhaps even of a billboard-type scale for the largest development sites.

Householder notices, when necessary, it was suggested, should be put up by the applicant.

A final suggestion in this area was whether every single amendment, when amendments are permitted…, has be readvertised.

In relation to consultees, the amount of comment that this link in the development management chain attracted is a reflection of how important a link in the chain it is.

Firstly, when consulting, it was queried whether LPAs seek the answer to specific questions rather than simply inviting comment. This is clearly important for the effectiveness of responses as well as their timeliness. It was further queried as to whether back office systems allow this. It sounds as if some do and some do not, which seems sub-optimal.

The afore-mentioned performance review of statutory consultees might be an opportunity to review template conditions and standing advice to ensure that both remain relevant and up to date. Consultation responses can be vague and suggested conditions can be unworkable, meaning that further officer time is spent navigating a way to the heart of the issue and then towards a resolution of it.

In that spirit, all consultees should have to clearly set comments out (using a template form) in relation to adverse impact or harm so as to focus on key considerations rather than what may be considered as ‘nice to haves’.

The “relevant to planning” statutory test needs to stop the practice of statutory consultees and other agencies using planning to enforce other legislation.

‘Use it lose it’ was raised by many contributors. There are two school of thought on this, which I sought to summarise here.

When responses are received, it was observed that some LPAs do not put representations on an online portal because of GDPR concerns, which means that it becomes the planning officer’s responsibility to summarise and share relevant feedback with the applicant. Why, it was suggested, can the magical AI fairy (author’s phraseology) not remove names and addresses from correspondence?

Further, through the magic of digital planning (author’s facetiousness), could a portal not be created upon which people could easily enter their comments and that would automatically remove any personal information; notify agents of the submission; summarise submissions post-consultation deadline; and add them to an accessible overall summary for the case officer and applicant’s agent to use as the basis for remedying outstanding issues. Such a portal, it was suggested, could also be used for local plan consultations.

Relatedly, it was queried why there is not one clear, consistent public access system across all LPAs and mandatory requirements for the information to be available on them (as well as public access systems with authoritative, accessible planning history search functions).

The plea for clear, intuitive web design that is “informed by planners and other users of the planning web pages” perhaps betrays the fact that some (if not the majority?) of LPA websites are not clear, intuitive and informed by planners and other users.

In the final analysis, in relation to consultation, it was noted that officers need to be supported to make recommendations without consultation responses or to balance competing consultation responses. As Emma observed in the recording, planning officers are more than post boxes. As Ros’ submission to me observed, “they have a role in synthesising information and mediating between consultees as well as with the applicant’s team. They have the widest understanding of a case and should be supported to express it.”

Decision-making

I will reproduce this comment in full for maximum effect.

"Plans lists are the bane of most planner's lives. The in-built functionality in back office systems takes too much time and investment when plans will likely change. Applicants submit drawing issue sheets - that you can't copy and paste from. Each and every drawing needs to be checked to make sure the title / number match up to avoid doubt later... Definitely one for software providers to work on so DMSs have accurate, full referencing so everyone knows what has been considered and consented."

Enough said.

Section 106 Agreements

What is to be done about Section 106 Agreements? The private sector expressed frustration that LPAs will not instruct the LPA’s solicitor (if they are lucky enough to have one…) until after planning committee and the public sector expressed frustration that applicants might often be reticent to sign a completed agreement until they are absolutely ready to get on site because so doing would trigger site purchase.

What is absolutely clear is that template S106 clauses and / or clear instructions to outsource legal agreements would speed things up, and applicants should absolutely be able to prepare first drafts.

It is understood that The Law Society is looking to revamp its model Section106 Agreement and to have this featured in PINS guidance on planning obligations.

More prosaically were the suggestions that all agreements should be completed with Docusign so that all parties have access to a searchable PDF rather than a scanned copy. Further, it was proposed that the upfront, online payment of developer contributions should be allowed up to £10,000.

Conditions

Suffice to say that the need for national model conditions came up time and time again.

It was suggested that fees for conditions need to be more reflective of the time required to discharge them, or that PPAs include fees for this stage of the process. Again, whatever locally-set fees look like can make provision for this.

Conditions on decision notices should be set out in a logical order (e.g. informatives, pre-commencement, pre-occupation, etc), and similarly grouped by relevant topic to avoid the delays generated when conditions overlap.

The Hillside farrago, it was wide observed, and the need for an ability to swiftly and easily amend a consent needs to remain an area of focus.

Conclusion

I think that The Snagging List recording is absolutely tremendous and, I would go as far as to say, essential listening. Please, if you have an interest in shortening planning application timeframes whilst at the same time increasing meaningful engagement with the planning system, do share this episode as widely as you can. I hope that it can be a platform for onward conversations across the sector about the improvements that we can all benefit from in both the shorter term and into the long-term.

In the shorter term, it seems to my unsophisticated mind that there are a few initiatives that we could all get behind to help make a meaningful difference.

Firstly, standardisation and the greater use of templates for things like validation checklists, Section 106 agreements and conditions.

Secondly, adopting more widely some the digitisation initiatives that have been shown to be successful, especially the back office systems.

Thirdly, and inevitably, all roads really do lead back to the statutory consultees. As stated above, Mr Pennycook made mention in a statement back in March of a new performance regime and funding settlement for them. Let us hope for swift progress on that.

Fourthly, MHCLG should be prompt in confirming the way ahead for those elements of the reform agenda presently being consulted upon (committees, site size thresholds, BNG exemptions, and so on).

Fifthly, whilst there is more recognition now than in recent times of the importance of putting planners at the centre of the planning system, officers need the support of well-resourced technical specialists. What can be done, for example, to support planning lawyers and the other specialists within local government? Ross Chambers shared something to this effect on LinkedIn recently.

Looking ahead, planners working back in 2008 will remember the Killian Pretty Review, which made recommendations that are still relevant today but were not fully acted upon. Since then the Rosewell Review of planning appeal inquiries is a successful example of deep dive that has had a visible impact in driving process improvements. Perhaps it is time for a Rosewell-style update to Killian Pretty?

Finally, it is noted that the RTPI is keen to enshrine a “purpose of planning". Let us all get behind that because it might help to move all of the issues raised above closer to the centre of whatever local government looks like in the future.