§ The Minister of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Lord Rooker)My right honourable friend the Minister for Housing and Planning has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
Today I am launching a consultation on the allocation criteria for £170 million of planning delivery grant (PDG) in 2005–06. The consultation paper will enable local authorities to calculate a high proportion of their grant entitlement, subject to any changes which may result from the outcome of the consultation. I am also launching a further consultation on increases to planning fees.
Planning delivery grant is aimed at providing additional resources to local planning authorities to support fundamental changes we want to see in the system to help deliver sustainable communities. The main principle underlying design of the grant is to reward performance in a range of planning activities.
For 2005–06, the total amount of grant available will be £170 million. Later in this Statement I will outline how proposed further planning fee increases will bring additional resource to authorities for planning.
92WSFor 2005–06 and for the two subsequent SR04 years, we propose to allocate PDG on the basis of a 75/25 per cent split between resource and capital, in line with the expectation that LPAs should use PDG to continue to invest in systems that will improve the efficiency and delivery of their planning services. The split is based on the level of PDG that was identified by research into the 2003–04 grant as spent on IT and capital improvements.
The consultation document, which shall go to all planning authorities in England, sets out proposals for rewarding planning performance improvement in the following areas: development control, development plans, enterprise areas, delivery of housing in areas of high and low demand—and provision of a quality service through e-planning.
Authorities and stakeholders are invited to comment on the criteria for awarding the grant, which, as in 2004–05, have been devised to reward good performance and to incentivise further improvements. The package also includes measures to assist regional planning bodies, the Planning Inspectorate and the Greater London Authority in their support for local authorities in bringing about planning reform. A small element of the grant has been top sliced to support national initiatives, such as the Planning Advisory Service, and the scheme of postgraduate planning bursaries.
I will carry forward mechanisms for withholding grant where there are concerns about the reliability of data, and also to sharpen the abatement of grant where the rate of appeals upheld against the authority's decision to refuse far exceeds the national average, to make sure that the grant rewards quality decision-making on applications as well as timeliness. Once again, there will be no minimum allocation.
I am very aware that authorities need as much information as possible at this time of year to help them with their budget-setting arrangements. For that reason, I am taking the step of including in the consultation actual intended allocation amounts where the statistics to make these are centrally available and, where they are not, I will give sufficient information to authorities to enable them either to work out the remainder of the allocation, or to provide them with an indicative range or a minimum amount. Using this information, authorities should be able to reach good estimates of their possible allocations for next year.
The consultation will end on 27 January 2005. Allocations of grant will be made in February 2005.
Today I am also launching a further consultation on increases to planning fees. The initial consultation, which ended on 9 December, proposed fee increases totalling £30 million for next year, but the measures on which I now wish to consult would raise fees to provide £68 million in total. So the total average increase in fees would be 39 per cent, not 17 per cent as previously consulted on. This would give authorities an important opportunity to help meet the costs of delivering their planning services.
It has become clear from the consultation already in progress that many respondents do not think the 93WS proposed increases are sufficient to enable them to carry out their planning functions. Developers have indicated that they would be prepared to see fee increases where they could be ensured of a quality service. I want to be able to give authorities the proper resources to provide 94WS the services the community needs. Once again, the proposed increases will be spread proportionately—the fees for householder applications will rise from £110 to £135, whilst the maximum fee for a major development will rise from £11,000 to £50,000.