What assessment has the Minister made of the impact of the new 20mph restrictions on the ability of local authority highway departments to respond promptly to planning applications?
Despite our best efforts to shield the public sector from the worst impacts, a decade of austerity, imposed by successive UK governments in Westminster, has stretched budgets to their limits. This has inevitably had an impact on local authorities. Since 2008-09 local planning authorities’ budgets have been cut in real terms by 50%. The biggest cuts have been to development control budgets where spend has reduced by 59%.
Varying design speed of carriageways and actual speed of traffic at development sites are two of the many highway development control considerations relating to planning applications. This work remains the same regardless of the default speed limit.