Councils have spent £45m on planning appeals in three years, data shows

Councils and the Planning Inspectorate have spent more than £50m combined on planning appeals over the past three years, new figures have shown.

The data, which was compiled by the Home Builders Federation (HBF) through freedom of information requests, also revealed that the top ten highest spending councils spent £5m alone on planning appeals during a three-year period between 2020 and 2023.

On average, each council spent £45,000 per year on legal advice relating to planning appeals over the three years, amounting to a national total of £15 million a year.

An additional FOI request sent to the Planning Inspectorate found that a further £5.6 million was spent by the agency on legal advice to deal with the volume of appeals received over the three-year period.

However, the costs vary greatly from council to council, with some authorities spending significantly more, the HBF said.    

Nine of the 10 biggest spenders are in Southern England.

Medway Council topped the list, having spent £680,000 over the last three years on legal advice.

A further three councils spent more than half a million over the last three years, including Central Bedfordshire (£633,000), Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council (£599,000) and Uttlesford District Council (£579,977).

Meanwhile, Westminster City Council saw the largest percentage increase in annual spending on legal advice for planning appeals at 11,239%, easily outstripping the council with the second largest increase, Surrey Heath Borough Council (3,075%).

Commenting on the figures, the HBF said: "The increased politicisation of the local plan process can be seen playing out, with nine of the ten biggest spenders located in the South East or East of England, areas where development has become increasingly controversial despite also facing the greatest demand and the most stretched affordability."

It added: "Additionally, of the five councils spending the most money fighting planning appeals, four have delayed adoption of local plans. 

"This is a trend increasingly seen across local authorities since the Government announced the proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) in December 2022 in response to the threat of a backbench rebellion from a group of NIMBY MPs led by Theresa Villiers MP."

The reforms to the NPPF, which have now been implemented, included a change that made the standard method for calculating housing need to establish the number of homes required an "advisory starting point".

It is thought that around 60 local authorities have withdrawn or delayed their local plan consultations.

The HBF pointed out that across councils spending the most on legal advice for planning appeals, the majority saw notable decreases in annual housing delivery between the year preceding the period in question (2019/20) and 2022/23. 

Kingston Upon Thames saw the highest decrease, with net additions in 2022/23 down 53% on 2019/20. Uttlesford was down by 41%, Basingstoke and Deane by 38% and Swale by 23%.

Stewart Baseley, executive chairman at the Home Builders Federation, warned that changes to planning laws were negatively affecting housebuilding. 

He said: "The politically driven weakening of the planning system will impact housing supply for years to come and needs to be urgently reversed.

"Removing the requirement for local housing needs assessments and allowing councils to ignore the housing needs of their areas has been shown by the independent Competition and Markets Authority to significantly impact housing affordability moving forward.”

He added: "The social and economic implications of driving down housing delivery are deepening, with a generation unable to access decent housing and investment in jobs and communities all suffering. Putting short term politics over the needs of the country will have long-term consequences for the economy and society."

Commenting on the figures, Cllr Darren Rodwell, Housing spokesperson for the Local Government Association, said: “People want their local area to have high-quality affordable homes built in the right places, supported by the right infrastructure.

"The reality is that planning is not a barrier to house building with nine in 10 planning applications approved by councils.”

Adam Carey