Mr. John Spain:

In our experience, the role of the local authority in the process remains very important. There is a pre-application process with the local authority. That is taken very seriously by applicants. It might often involve two, three, four or more pre-application meetings with the local authority planning officers. It is important to seek to resolve all issues insofar as possible prior even to getting involved with the pre-application process with the board. In our experience, applicants seek to address fully the planning issues and concerns raised by the planning authority and, in that regard, also have regard to the development plan made by the elected members, the local area plans and so on. Those issues and concerns must be addressed in the context of Government policy.

We have seen Government policy move on significantly in the past two years with the national planning framework, the regional spatial and economic strategy and so on. Development plans are now going through a review process to reflect that. The local authority input remains very important pre-application. As Mr. Hyde referenced, there is involvement with the board at the pre-application stage. It attends the tripartite meeting, makes an initial report to the board and also submits a report to the board on the application. That report is an important part of the process and, in our experience, is given serious consideration by the board. That is the reason the pre-application process for the local authority is so important.

Ultimately, in terms of third-party appeal rights, the decision is made by the board in those cases. In strategic housing developments, the decision is also made by the board. All third-party ownership parties have the opportunity to make observations to the board, and those observations are an important part of the process. It is a faster and more efficient way to get to the end of the decision-making process and one that has proved effective in terms of encouraging much-needed investment in housing planning applications leading on to housing development.

As Mr. Corr mentioned, there have been concerns about the delivery rates of permissions. We referred to a time lag. One way to try to speed up that process would be to commence the provisions of the 2018 Planning and Development (Amendment) Act, which provide for a strict time limit for deciding on compliance applications. We would urge the commencement of those provisions, which are on the Statute Book but have not been commenced, as a matter of urgency. That requires the resourcing at local authority level, to which Mr. Corr referred.

I will make a final comment in respect of websites. We agree it would be beneficial, and I am pleased to hear that the board is putting in place, a system whereby the application is hosted on the board's rather than on the applicant's website. That is part of our submission on that.

In terms of further information, we note that the board has held focused oral hearings on two strategic housing applications relatively recently. We welcome that. That may be one way to address the concern about further information.