The money comprises spending by individual councils and by the Planning Inspectorate, an executive agency of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities responsible for dealing with appeals.

The results obtained through a survey using FOI requests also reveal that 50% of appeals involving dwellings over the three years were approved by the Planning Inspectorate.

The news comes amidst a steep drop in housing supply and a crisis in planning for new homes that has seen:

• Planning permissions numbers plummeting with the number of new sites approved in 2023 lowest on record.
• Over 60 Local Authorities withdrew plans for new housing following the removal of one of the key planks in the planning system of housing targets. Research by Lichfield’s predicted that this would lead to 75,000 fewer homes being planned for and built each year – a prediction that is now playing out with Local Authorities’ resubmitting their Plans with lower numbers in advance of the election of a potential Labour Government that has committed to reverse Goves’ capitulation to the NIMBY wing of his party.
• Underfunded local authority planning departments are increasingly overwhelmed by a growing list of planning requirements that has led to major delays in the processing of applications which are now taking in some case up to four years to sign off.

The new data finds that each local council spent an average of £45,000 per year on legal advice relating to planning appeals between 2020/21 and 2022/23, amounting to a national total of £15 million a year.