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The government will extend planning permission deadlines by up to a year and speed up the planning appeals process in a bid to save threatened developments and “Get Britain Building”.
Under new plans outlined today by the housing secretary Robert Jenrick, construction sites with planning permission expiry dates between the start of lockdown and the end of this year will have consent extended until 1 April 2021, to help the industry recover from the COVID-19 disruption.
Planning permissions usually last for three years and the government estimates that permission for more than 400 residential developments of more than 24,000 new homes was set to expire by the end of June.
Housing secretary Robert Jenrick also announced plans to speed up planning appeals. Under the new rules, the Planning Inspectorate will have the ability to use more than one procedure at the same time when dealing with a planning appeal, including written representations, hearings and inquiries.
The new method, put forward by Bridget Rosewell as part of her independent review of planning last year, is expected to halve the time taken for appeals.
The government said the approach has been piloted and resulted in the time taken for appeal inquiries falling from 47 to 23 weeks.
Mr Jenrick claimed that building homes is a “central mission” of the government and it sees construction as an important part of the recovery from COVID-19.
He said: “New laws will enable us to speed up the pace of planning appeals and save hundreds of construction sites from being cancelled before they have a chance to get spades in the ground, helping to protect hundreds of thousands of jobs and create many others.
“Taken together, these measures will help to keep workers safe and our economy moving as we work together to bounce back from the pandemic.”
He also said the extension of the planning deadlines would prevent work that has been temporarily disrupted by the pandemic from stopping altogether.
It forms part of the government’s wider support construction, which also saw it extend site working hours to 9pm at night.