Statutory consultees are failing to respond within the 21-day period on 67% of rural planning applications, according to figures from eight authorities.
Average response time on those applications is 94 days. In cases involving designated sites it exceeds six months.
Where a consultee does not respond, planning authorities may determine the application without their input. This is lawful, long-established, and was designed as a safeguard against one body stalling the system indefinitely.
It is now the routine outcome rather than the exception.
Consent by absence
The eight authorities determined 1,340 rural applications last year without a substantive response from at least one statutory consultee. Of those, 71 involved a designated natural heritage site and 38 involved a private water supply catchment.
None of the consultees involved objected to any of them, because none of them saw any of them.
“There is no decision being made to approve these. There is a clock running out. The system is producing consent as a by-product of understaffing and that is not what anybody designed.”
A former regulator now advising community groups
Why the bodies are behind
Consultation volumes at the environmental agencies have roughly tripled since 2019. Their headcount has not risen. Both operate under budget settlements set before the change in application volumes and are, in the language of their own annual reports, prioritising “the highest-risk casework”.
The difficulty with prioritising by risk is that assessing the risk is the casework.
The 21-day window
- Statutory response period: 21 days
- Average actual response, rural applications: 94 days
- Applications determined without a response: 1,340 across 8 authorities last year
- Of those, involving a designated site: 71
- Consultation volumes vs 2019: roughly 3x
- Consultee headcount vs 2019: broadly flat
The proposal on the table
Council planning officers have proposed the least dramatic fix available: extend the statutory period to 40 days, and fund the consultees to meet it.
The first half requires legislation. The second half requires money. Neither has been programmed.
