Written evidence to be reported to the House
Planning Bill
11:00 am
John Cridland: There is clearly merit in a little bit of flexibility for the extreme cases. No one would want deadlines to result in a situation where poor judgments were made simply because of the lack of opportunity to explore. But I would stress that those are very exceptional situations. The problem that we face at the moment is that there are not effective deadlines within the system, at all levels. We must not allow a focus on the 1 per cent. of situations to spoil the process for the 99 per cent. of situations where the six and nine months are eminently achievable.