Three North West authorities to benefit from planning fund
The £15.8m first wave of the Planning Delivery Fund has allocated money to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Liverpool City Region and Eden Council.
A total of £950,000 will go to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, allowing it to deliver a new Place Team, create Mayoral Development Corporations and provide additional resource to deliver investment.
Liverpool City Region’s £331,700 funding is, like Manchester’s, classed as for “additional design resource and increase capacity in joint planning,” while in Cumbria, Eden is to receive £250,000 to develop its joint planning capabilities.
The funding comes as part of a government drive to help speed up planning decisions and help deliver housing and was announced by housing minister Dominic Raab over the weekend.
The Planning Delivery Fund has been awarded to enable councils to process more applications, implement reforms and train planners to tackle the housing challenges faced by their local area.
Raab said: “This cash boost ensures councils have the resources needed to make quicker decisions on planning applications, delivering quality housing at a faster rate.
“It’s part of our strategy to build the homes this country needs whilst also supporting residents to have their say on the kind of development that takes place in their area.”
There is a particular emphasis on supporting local authorities working together on joint local plans and core strategies.
The launch of the fund comes as the Ministry for Housing prepares to launch its revised National Planning Policy Framework later this spring.
Save us from the likes of Mr Raab.
By Schwyz
“It’s part of our strategy to build the homes this country needs…”
Hmmm, or in other words, make a partial and token contribution to restoring funding syphoned from council budgets in a belated acknowledgement of the chaos that their idologically-driven cuts, disproportionately targetted towards local government and urban authorities in particular, together with their abject lack of strategy has caused thus far.
Far from being a positive development this is a sign of the scale of incompetence at the heart of this government, desparately repairing the damage of ill thought through policy.
By Unspun
@unspun – Well said
By HolyDiver