East Kent Councils to jointly receive £250,000 from Government’s new Planning Skills Delivery Fund

Five local authorities in East Kent have learnt that they will jointly receive £250,000 from the government’s new Planning Skills Delivery Fund.

The fund is aimed at supporting local authorities to help clear backlogs of planning applications and address skills gaps to progress important work areas.

Ashford Borough Council led a joint bid with Canterbury, Dover, Folkestone and Hythe and Thanet councils for the planning skills element of the fund. The grant will bolster urban design capacity to help the group produce a design code, an important document to help shape future development in a sympathetic way, and to achieve good placemaking.

Working together on this project ensures the authorities can maximise efficiency, make best uses of resources and be more cost effective than progressing alone. Whilst it will be a joint commission, there will be separate design codes tailored to the particular issues in each authority area, enabling them to respond to important local context.

The group await further details from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and are currently drafting a brief of work to be invited to tender, to be published shortly.