Labour set to raise planning fees

The Government is considering increasing planning fees in the planning Green Paper due out this autumn. At the Labour Party conference housing and planning minister Lord Falconer accepted that planning departments were under resourced and said that higher application fees would be one way of funding a more efficient service.

Housebuilders already contribute around a third of the £522m annual running costs of the English planning system and Housebuilder's Federation spokesperson James Whitaker dismissed the proposal. "This will not help planning applications. Planning fees themselves will never get to the point of paying for a full service," he said. "Lord Falconer is being naïve if he thinks that raising fees will pay for the employment of enough new people to run an effective service."

Trevor Selwyn, land director at Copthorn Homes, said that better funding would be welcome. "We sympathise with local authority planning departments. They are understaffed and under-resourced. There's got to be a greater influx from the private sector to planning departments."

The HBF believes that the most important aspect of the new planning policy will be its implementation. "The government needs to impress on the local authorities the need to adhere to the policy. At the moment councils are allowed to pick the bits they like."

Falconer appeared to acknowledge this last month when he said that he wanted council planners to implement the policy as a whole package, "not at some point in the future when greenfield allocations have run dry."

The indications are that the green paper will further reinforce PPG3. Lord Falconer is committed to building 60% of new homes on brown land and he has stated that he wants to increase the use of higher-density housing, provide a better mix of house types to encourage social inclusion and affordable housing, and improve access to local facilities and public transport.