Planning Inspectorate
Today sees the publication of The Planning Inspectorates Annual Report and Accounts for 2023/24.
The Annual Report and Accounts details what the Planning Inspectorate has done over the last year to help achieve its mission to provide consistently timely, high-quality and cost-effective decisions, recommendations and advice.
In the Reports foreword Paul Morrison reflects on his second full year as Chief Executive. He writes:
I said last year that my early impressions of the Inspectorate were of a body held in wide and often expressed esteem by many working in the planning system and beyond. That impression has been confirmed by my daily contact with colleagues and customers.
We have refocused our strategy on the core of what the Planning Inspectorate is here to do, to make consistently timely, high-quality, and cost-effective decisions. We have set the ambition that by 2027 we will have no backlogs, 98% cases will be dealt with in target with no compromise on the quality of the work delivered. The report describes both the extent to which we are beginning to meet that ambition, but also how far we have left to go.
Some of the key achievements made in the last year include:
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We made 18,214 decisions and recommendations, leading to the most sustained fall in our backlog of open appeal cases since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
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We launched the Application Service, enabling digital National Infrastructure applications, and provided 15 of these recommendations to a Secretary of State, all within statutory timeframes.
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We issued 23 reports for Local and Development plans across the country.
The Annual Report and Accounts covers the period of April 2023 to March 2024. Read the most up-to-date performance data for the Inspect