Many districts submitted their responses to the Department for Communities and Local Government’s (DCLG) ‘Implementation of planning changes’ consultation. Among the proposals in the consultation, the potential for greater local control over the level of planning fees and the introduction of competition into the planning system has been of particular interest to our District Councils’ Network (DCN) members.

The DCN is engaging in a number of workshops with the DCLG to support collaborative thinking around what the pilots for the localisation of planning fees and what alternative providers might look like.