Issue - meetings

This report sets out a proposal to agree that a 20% increase in planning fees be applied from 1 July 2017.

Discussion:

This report provided details of the Government White Paper ‘Fixing our Broken Housing Market’ which included a proposal to allow Local Authorities to increase the nationally set planning fee by 20% from 1 July 2017 if they committed to invest the additional fee income in their planning department in order to help deliver housing.

The Cabinet had considered these proposals on 4 April 2017, details of which were set out in paragraph 7 of the report.

The Portfolio Holder for Planning, Economic Growth and Regulation, Councillor Chitty, supported by the Leader of the Council, Councillor Jarrett, proposed the recommendation in the report with the addition of “…or such other date that may be confirmed by DCLG”.  

Decision:

The Council agreed to increase all planning fees by 20%, as set out in Appendix 2 to the report, for implementation from 1 July 2017 or such other date that may be confirmed by Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG).

Background:

This report set out a proposal to agree a 20% increase in the Council’s planning fees from 1 July 2017 in line with proposals set out in the recent Government white paper ‘Fixing our broken Housing Market’ which was published on 7 February 2017.

The report stated that this provided an opportunity to make improvements to resourcing, leading to better services, improved performance and greater capacity to deliver growth in the planning service.

Reasons:

To deliver growth in Medway and help meet the Local Plan target for housing needs.