Stuart Andrew says decision-making process taking 鈥榬idiculous amount of time鈥

The housing minister has admitted council planning departments are facing resourcing difficulties but pledged to tackle the issue and 鈥榝ree up planners to be planners鈥.

Stuart Andrew, speaking at a 好色先生TV Garden Communities event earlier this week, said he has heard the question of whether planners have the resources to deliver initiatives such as garden communities 鈥渁 lot鈥 since becoming housing minister in February.

stuart andrew

Stuart Andrew speaking at the RIBA earlier this week

Andrew said: 鈥淚 recognise there are constraints and there are difficulties. It鈥檚 taking a ridiculous amount of time to develop a local plan, we want to make it simpler, so those can be done in 30 months rather than in years.

鈥淭he second thing is we鈥檝e got a skills strategy that we are starting within the [levelling up, housing and communities] department to look at and identify the issues that exist within local planning authorities.鈥

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The government is also looking to for major applications and a quarter for minor applications to try and put more money into the system.

He added: 鈥淭here will be things in the [levelling up] bill to increase planning fees, so there will be more money, but I recognize that this is an issue at the end of the day. We want to free up planners to be planners.鈥

Official showed the speed of decision-making by councils hitting its lowest point for five years in the third quarter of last year, while a number of housebuilders have cited planning delays as .