Back in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic we noticed that planning and development were continuing. We asked you to get in touch about what was happening in your local area, to tell us how decisions were being made about new housing. We worried that changes to oversight of planning might mean that proper transport provision for new homes might be neglected.
Thank you to the many of you who got in touch. We had replies from all over the country. You told us that councils approached the problem of planning in different ways. Some moved to online planning committee meetings right away and others delayed decisions. It was difficult to keep up with the volume of applications for some authorities, so more decisions were delegated to officers.
Online planning committees were sometimes reserved for the biggest applications. As we were busy finalising our Garden Communities report we were interested to know if any of them were going through planning and affected by COVID-19. Many Garden Towns and Garden Villages are progressing through the planning system.
Just before our report launched a planning inspector approved some and threw out other new Garden Communities as part of a local plan in Essex. On the day our report launched, Buckinghamshire Council met to approve the garden town plan in Aylesbury.
One thing many of you told us that is concerning was the reduction or complete elimination of the opportunity to speak at planning committee because of COVID-19 and remote working. The reasons for this varied from the limited amount of time available, technical limitations or because a decision had been delegated to officers.
Overall, we found a mixed bag of council planning responses to COVID-19. But what linked them all was a reduction of the ability for residents to make their voices heard. It is harder now to make the case against car-based sprawl and for sustainable transport. We think councils should return to their previous ways of working as soon as is practical and restore public involvement as soon as they can.