Chief planning officer calls on councils to act promptly on applications to replace unsafe cladding

Chief planning officer Joanna Averley has urged local authorities to speed up planning applications for the replacement of dangerous cladding on tower blocks.

In a letter to English planning departments on 1 September, Ms Averley said local authorities had helped with progress in the removal of aluminium composite material (ACM) and other potentially flammable claddings by making timely decisions on many applications for proposed remediations when permission was required.

But she added: “ACM cladding and all other types of unsafe cladding on high-rise buildings present a significant fire hazard.

“Whilst some planning decisions are being made promptly on these buildings, there are inconsistencies across planning authorities and some planning applications still waiting for approval.

“To this end, I would encourage local authority planning departments to prioritise and take a proactive approach to planning applications for high-rise buildings with unsafe cladding.”

She said planning approval may not be required where the external appearance of a building is not materially altered by replacement cladding and councils should work with building owners to identify whether planning approval is necessary.

Where this is necessary, pre-application engagement could help to resolve any issues and assist in timely decisions and local authorities should take a “proportionate approach to the amount of information needed to support an application”.

Averley said the six years on from the Grenfell Tower fire 96% of all identified high-rise buildings in England have either completed or started remediation work to remove and replace unsafe ACM cladding.

High-rise residential buildings with other forms of unsafe cladding have had more than £1.9bn allocated from the Building Safety Fund and 416 buildings had started or completed remediation.

Mark Smulian