Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on delays to planning applications for wind farms and solar parks received by Planning and Environment Decisions Wales?
Planning and Environment Decisions Wales (PEDW) continues to face significant workload pressures due to the significant increase in the number of applications for Developments of National Significance (DNS) in recent years in addition to the range of applications, appeals and other work they are responsible for. This trend is expected continue throughout 2025.
Occasionally there are delays to the acceptance and starting of DNS applications. However, these are usually because the application has not passed the validation checks and further information is required to make the application valid. PEDW is working with industry representatives to address these issues with the quality of submissions to avoid unnecessary delays in future. This year, the average time for accepting and starting a DNS application is 5 weeks from date of receipt of a valid application, meaning that most are under the 6 week target for acceptance of EIA applications. In January I introduced regulations to delegate DNS decisions on smaller schemes to Inspectors ahead of the new Infrastructure Act changes. Since then, 5 delegated decisions have been made by Inspectors all between 10-15 weeks ahead of the statutory decision deadline of 36 weeks. These demonstrate the significant impact that delegation has had on speed of decisions.
PEDW have already recruited and trained new staff and have introduced changes to their ways of working to speed up every step of the process, from validation to decision. They continue to work with stakeholders to improve the quality of submissions to avoid delays during the application.