Business leaders have welcomed moves to streamline the planning system in England, set out in an interim report from Kate Barker. Her report to the Treasury says the planning system needs to be ‘flexible, and deliver decisions efficiently and effectively’, and points out that one-third of councils are not meeting government targets for dealing with planning applications. ‘Recent reforms have made big steps forward, but I believe we can do still more,’ said Ms Barker, who was appointed to lead an independent review of the land-use planning system last December. CBI director general, Richard Lambert, said the report presented a ‘welcome critique’ of the UK planning system, but warned that changes in legislation were needed to speed up decisions. ‘The current planning regime is serving neither the economy nor the nation as well as it should,’ he said. ‘Under the current regime, big, complicated projects can be very difficult to get off the ground. ‘Where there are major projects essential to the future of the UK, such as power stations and transport infrastructure, there must be a better balance between local interests and national need,’ he said.
