§ Mr. BakerTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what percentage of planning appeals dealt with by means of written representations since 1 May 1997 have conformed with the timescales required by the Written Representations Regulations 1987. [73403]
§ Mr. RaynsfordThe provision of information on planning appeals is the responsibility of the Planning Inspectorate. I have asked the Inspector's Chief Executive, Mr. Chris Shepley, to write to the hon. Member.
522WLetter from C. J. Shepley to Mr. Norman Baker, dated 1 March 1999:
The Secretary of State has asked me to reply to your Question about planning appeals which have conformed with the timescales required by the Written Representations Regulations.The Written Representations Regulations 1987 require parties to an appeal (including third parties) to comply with a number of timescales set out in the Regulations. These cover such things as the time when the LPA should notify other parties that they have received the appeal (within 5 days) and other timescales for submitting statements and responses. If these are all conformed to the date for the site visit, which would be set by the Inspectorate, could be in 8–10 weeks from the appeal start date.In a significant number of cases, however, we are not placed to set the site visit in the 8th week because one or other of the parties fails to abide by the time limits (as provided for by the Regulation). Because of the number of stages (or time limits) involved we do not keep records of conformity in the procedural stages.However the Inspectorate is set performance targets by the Minister. For Written Representation cases the timeliness target for this year is that in 80% of cases a decision should be issued within 18 weeks of the receipt of the appeal. So far since April 1998 we have achieved this target in every month.