Recent headlines have once again suggested that Wales’ planning system is preventing the delivery of the homes the country needs.
It is an argument that resurfaces whenever housebuilding slows or major developments are delayed. Yet it presents an overly simplistic explanation for what is, in reality, a far more complex challenge. If Wales is serious about increasing housing delivery, we need to look beyond planning decisions and address the wider pressures affecting the entire development process.
Governments increasingly expect the planning system to deliver more homes, more affordable housing, stronger environmental protection, better placemaking, climate resilience, and biodiversity enhancement. At the same time, the system itself is under growing pressure.
Research by the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) highlights the scale of the challenge. Gross expenditure on planning in Wales was reported to be 34.3 per cent lower in 2025 than in 2010, while planning fee income has continued to decline since 2022.
At the same time, planners are navigating increasingly complex legislation, policy requirements, and technical evidence. It is little surprise that determination periods have lengthened and service pressures have intensified.
The same research found that around two thirds of respondents believed the overall burden on the profession had increased. The question, therefore, is not simply whether departments need greater funding, but whether the way planning services are delivered remains fit for purpose.
Planning is often the public face of development decisions, but decision-makers rarely work in isolation. Local Planning Authorities depend heavily on statutory consultees and an increasingly wide range of specialist technical advice.
Depending on the location and nature of a proposal, applications may require Habitat Regulations Assessments, Environmental Impact Assessments, flood risk assessments, and specialist reports covering ecology, heritage, transport, viability, and other disciplines. These safeguards are essential and should not be weakened. However, every additional policy objective creates further work for applicants, consultees, and planning authorities alike.
The RTPI identified 19 specialist disciplines that planning authorities considered to be in short supply, with viability, ecology, and regeneration among the most significant. As these shortages have grown, planners have increasingly been expected to bridge the gaps themselves.
A more flexible approach, allowing authorities to access specialist expertise when required rather than relying solely on traditional staffing models, could improve both resilience and decision-making.
The challenges surrounding river phosphates provide a good example. When Natural Resources Wales (NRW) introduced guidance on nutrient impacts affecting protected river catchments, many housing schemes were delayed while appropriate assessments and mitigation measures were developed.
Whatever one’s view of the policy itself, the episode demonstrated that housing delivery increasingly depends on navigating complex environmental regulation, supported by specialist evidence and effective collaboration between planning authorities, applicants, and statutory consultees.
If Wales wishes to maintain world-leading environmental protections, it must also ensure the organisations responsible for administering them are properly resourced. Strengthening planning departments alone will not resolve delays if statutory consultees continue to face similar capacity constraints.
The importance of plan-making
A strong plan-led system remains essential if Wales is to increase housing delivery.
Many authorities are reviewing or replacing their Local Development Plans while longer-term Strategic Development Plans continue to evolve. Although resource-intensive, these exercises provide certainty about where development should take place.
In my experience, the strongest planning systems are not necessarily those making the quickest decisions, but those providing the greatest certainty. Robust development plans resolve strategic questions before planning applications are submitted, reducing conflict later in the process.
That also requires realism. Housing allocations should be based on deliverability rather than optimism, with sufficient flexibility where assumptions do not materialise. In some areas, that may require sensible contingency through additional allocations or strategic review mechanisms.
There is also a strong case for allocating land specifically for affordable housing. My experience of delivering rural exception sites demonstrates how policy complexity can create uncertainty, even where there is broad support for meeting identified local housing needs.
Rethinking service delivery
Planning departments have experienced years of rising demand alongside financial and workforce pressures. Yet relatively little attention has been given to whether services themselves should be organised differently.
My MBA studies at Warwick Business School reinforced how organisations operating under sustained pressure can redesign services to improve efficiency without compromising quality. The same principles are equally relevant to planning.
Many authorities still rely on traditional structures, with case officers managing applications from start to finish before decisions progress through successive management layers. While every authority will require its own approach, there is a strong case for reviewing operating models to identify opportunities for greater efficiency, clearer specialisation, and better use of limited professional resources.
Technology should also form part of that conversation. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are already demonstrating an ability to reduce administrative workload within planning services. Emerging tools can digitise historic planning records, extract information from large volumes of documents, and support routine administrative processes far more efficiently than traditional manual methods.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s Extract platform, now available to planning authorities in England, is one example of how technology could modernise planning administration. Similarly, pilot projects involving authorities including Barnet, Camden, and Dorset are exploring how AI can support elements of application processing.
These initiatives remain at an early stage, and their long-term benefits are still being evaluated. AI will not replace professional planners, nor should it. Planning decisions require judgement, experience, and democratic accountability.
However, if technology can reliably reduce repetitive administrative work, planners will have more time to focus on professional analysis, stakeholder engagement, and decision-making. For a profession facing persistent recruitment and retention challenges, that represents a valuable opportunity.
Looking beyond simplistic explanations
The debate around housing delivery often seeks simple explanations, with planning frequently becoming the easiest target. The evidence, however, points to a far more complex picture.
Wales expects its planning system to deliver more homes, more affordable housing and stronger environmental outcomes than ever before, while operating with constrained resources, significant skills shortages, increasingly complex regulation and growing expectations from government and communities alike.
If Wales genuinely wants to increase housing delivery, the answer is unlikely to lie in blaming planners. Instead, attention should focus on ensuring planning authorities and statutory consultees have access to the skills and resources they need, maintaining an effective plan-led system, embracing more flexible approaches to service delivery, and adopting technology where it demonstrably improves efficiency.
Planning has become an easy target in the housing debate, but the evidence suggests the barriers to housing delivery are far broader than the planning process alone.
With the right resources, specialist expertise and modern technology, planning remains one of Wales’ most effective tools for delivering the homes, communities, and environmental outcomes the country needs.
