Changes to section 106 negotiations, performance thresholds for major applications and new proposals for compulsory purchase have been put forward as part of Chancellor George Osborne’s Autumn Statement 2014.
Section 1.141 of the HM Government budget report states:
The government has taken significant steps to speed up planning decisions. Building on this progress, the government will take further action to speed up the end-to-end planning process for major and minor applications, and to support SMEs, including:
- ensuring that the principle of development need only be established once, to give greater certainty and allow locally-supported development to proceed more quickly
- taking steps to speed up section 106 negotiations, including revised guidance, consulting on a faster process for reaching agreement, considering how timescales for agreement could be introduced, and improving transparency on the use of section 106 funds
- keeping the speed of decisions on major applications under review, with the minimum performance threshold increasing to 50% of major decisions on time as performance continues to improve
- publishing new data on local authorities’ performance in meeting their statutory duty to process smaller planning applications within 8 weeks
- working with industry and local authorities to test whether more can be done to support the approval of small sites in the planning system
- publishing proposals for consultation at Budget 2015 on making the Compulsory Purchase Regime clearer, faster and fairer, with the aim of bringing forward more brownfield land for development
