Member

Amendment 135G would enable the Secretary of State to prescribe the timeframes for determining planning applications, and where these are not met, the Secretary of State may set the process used by which applications may be granted deemed consent. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, on the need to speed up planning decisions. Provision for deemed discharge of planning conditions already exists within the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. This was introduced in 2015 to incentivise local planning authorities to speed up dealing with such applications, but it is little used.