Deputy Prime Minister and housing secretary Angela Rayner has outlined how UK planning decisions will be fast-tracked via a major overhaul of local planning committees.

The measures announced in the planning overhaul are designed to tackle the housing crisis.

This includes modernising the planning approval process, so applications that comply with local development plans could bypass planning committees entirely. The government argues that this would help tackle chronic uncertainty, unacceptable delays and unnecessary waste of time and resources.

The measures would also see a national scheme of delegation introduced, the creation of streamlined committees for strategic development and mandatory training for planning committee members.

Local planning officers will also have an enhanced decision-making role to implement agreed planning policy.

The Labour government hopes the changes will mean greater certainty to housebuilders that good-quality schemes aligned with already-agreed local development plans will be approved in a timely manner to get spades in the ground.  This in turn, should kickstart economic growth and raise living standards in every part of the country.

Commenting on the measures Rayner said: “Streamlining the approvals process by modernising local planning committees means tackling the chronic uncertainty and damaging delays that acts as a drag anchor on building the homes people desperately need.”

She added: “Grasping the nettle of planning committee reform and fast-tracking decision-making is a vital part of our Plan for Change. Building 1.5 million homes over five years means tackling the housing crisis we inherited head-on with bold action.”

The government’s ambitious 1.5 million new homes target has already been questioned in Parliament and across the industry.

Last week, in response to weaker housebuilding figures from the S&P Global UK Construction PMI for November,  Bloom Building Consultancy director, Gareth Belsham said: “With residential developers still chafing at high interest rates – which make it more expensive for them to buy land and build homes – and patchy consumer demand, the Government’s promise to get 1.5 million more homes built in England over the next five years is looking ever more pie in the sky.”

The government is this week expected to confirm sweeping changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) following a consultation launched in July.