Designated authorities and applying direct to the Secretary of State

Where the Secretary of State has designated a local planning authority as poorly performing, applicants can send an application for development in the designated category straight to the Secretary of State instead of to the council. The designation itself is made under section 62B of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The route it unlocks sits in section 62A of the same Act. A designated authority under section 62B loses the right to determine those applications for as long as the designation stands, and the Planning Inspectorate decides them in its place.

This matters to a promoter sitting on a major site in a slow authority. It matters rather less once you look at what you still need the council for.

How an authority becomes designated

Designation is a ministerial decision, not an automatic consequence of missing a deadline. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government publishes criteria setting out the measures used, the assessment periods and the way authorities are told they are at risk. Designation is made by category of development rather than across the board, so an authority can be designated for major development, for non-major development, or for both, and each category is assessed separately.

The data comes from the authority's own quarterly returns to the department and from recorded appeal outcomes. Authorities at risk are written to before any designation is confirmed, and the criteria explain how representations about exceptional circumstances are taken into account. A designation stays in place until the Secretary of State lifts it, and performance is reassessed on the published cycle, so authorities do come off the list.

Designation is a planning performance mechanism. It says nothing about whether your scheme is acceptable, and it gives you no policy advantage at all.

The performance measures behind a designation

Two measures do the work. Speed looks at the proportion of applications in the category that the authority determined within the statutory period, or within an extension of time agreed in writing with the applicant, or within a planning performance agreement. Quality looks at the proportion of the authority's decisions in the category that were overturned on appeal, measured over a window long enough for those appeals to have been decided.

The statutory periods the speed measure works from are the familiar ones in the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015:

The percentage thresholds attached to each measure have been tightened more than once since the regime started in 2013, and they differ between the major and non-major categories. Do not work from a figure you remember. Read the current criteria document before you brief anyone, because a threshold that was comfortable three years ago may not be the one in force.

One consequence of the speed measure is worth knowing as an applicant. An agreed extension of time counts as an on-time decision, which is why hard-pressed authorities ask for them so readily. Agreeing one helps the authority's statistics and costs you programme. Refusing one gives you a refusal or a non-determination appeal on the eighth or thirteenth week.

Which applications can take the section 62A route

The route follows the designation. If an authority is designated for major development only, only applications for major development in that area can go direct, and the ordinary route stays open for everything else. Major development carries its usual meaning, so ten or more dwellings, a site of 0.5 hectares or more for residential, or 1,000 m² or more of floorspace will generally qualify, and the same thresholds that drive your evidence base also decide whether this route exists for you.

Using it is optional. An applicant in a designated area can still apply to the council, and most do.

The route does not reach applications that a different authority determines, such as minerals and waste county matters. Nor does it change what the application has to contain. The national validation requirements still apply, and so does the authority's local list, so your Planning Statement and the rest of the supporting documents are the same bundle you would have submitted anyway. Ask the Inspectorate at the start which follow-up applications it will handle, because reserved matters, condition discharge and section 73 variations are what will occupy you for the two years after the decision.

How the Planning Inspectorate handles the application

The application is made to the Secretary of State on the Inspectorate's forms and is validated centrally. The local planning authority is consulted and asked to report on the proposal against its own development plan, which means the council's view still lands in front of the decision maker, just as a consultee rather than as the decision taker. Publicity and consultation are carried out as they would be locally, and statutory consultees are consulted in the normal way.

An inspector appointed by the Secretary of State then determines the application by written representations, a hearing or an inquiry, chosen by reference to the issues rather than by the applicant's preference.

Two practical points follow. First, there is no further right of appeal, because the decision is already the Secretary of State's. A challenge goes to the High Court under section 288 of the 1990 Act, on legal grounds only, within six weeks. Second, a planning obligation still has to be negotiated with the council, which remains the body that enforces obligations over its own area, together with the county authority for education and highways contributions. The authority you went around is still your counterparty on the agreement, and still the body collecting the levy and, later, the monitoring fees attached to each obligation.

Fees and where they are paid

The application fee for a section 62A application is paid to the Secretary of State rather than to the council, under the national fees regulations. Those fees are indexed annually, so take the figure from the current schedule on the Planning Portal or gov.uk at the point you submit rather than from a budget built last year.

Nothing else about the cost changes. Surveys, the transport evidence, the ecology work and the viability appraisal all cost what they would have cost. If anything the budget goes up, because a written representations case or an inquiry needs the evidence presented in a form an inspector can test, which usually means proofs and a statement of case on top of the application documents.

Why the route is used so rarely

Designations are few, they are category-specific, and they are often lifted at the next assessment. A promoter weighing the route is therefore betting that the designation survives long enough to be useful.

The deeper reason is that the council does not go away. You need it for the section 106 agreement, for condition discharge, for street naming, for the highway agreement through the county, and for every subsequent application on the site. Burning that relationship to save a few weeks on one decision is a poor trade on a site you will be working on for years. Local political context does not disappear either. An inspector will still read the adopted plan, and if a neighbourhood plan covers your site its policies carry the same statutory weight as they would locally.

And most of the delay an applicant actually experiences is not the authority's determination period at all. It is consultee responses, the obligation drafting and the committee cycle. Honest answer on effectiveness: with so few applications having used section 62A, nobody can say with confidence that it delivers faster or better decisions than a well-run extension of time.

Where a designated authority is also failing to deliver land, the more useful lever is usually the one in national policy rather than the procedural one. The position on housing land supply is likely to change the balance on your application far more than the identity of the decision maker.

Checking whether an authority is designated now

Designations and de-designations are announced by the department and listed alongside the criteria on gov.uk. Check the current list before you commit, because the position changes on the assessment cycle and a route that existed when you took the strategic decision may have closed by submission.

Two further checks are worth ten minutes. Look at the authority's own figures in the quarterly planning statistics, which show the speed and appeal performance that feed the measures, and look at the pattern of agreed extensions of time. An authority deciding most majors inside an extension is not going to be designated, however slow it feels to you.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

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