Ms Anne Graham:

The planning consent process is dealing with a huge number of planning applications – all at the same time, unfortunately. People say there are no buses for a while and that three then turn up at the same time. Unfortunately, three mega-projects are coming through the planning system at the same time: DART+, BusConnects and MetroLink. That is just in the transport sector. There are also the other planning consents that are required. The planning consent system has to deal with this. I am aware a large amount of additional resources were made available to deal with it. We hope the planning consent system will be able to deliver planning consents a lot quicker as a result.

In the lead-up, it is important that we continue to take time to plan properly, engage with the local communities we will be serving and ensure some consensus on the projects we are bringing forward before they reach the planning consent system. It is valuable to spend time doing that, but we would like to see a somewhat quicker turnaround regarding planning consents. We will see that now that the resources are in place.