Farm and housing projects hit by Welsh planning delays

Rural homes, farm diversification projects and business investment are being held up for years by planning delays in Wales, new figures suggest.

Freedom of Information requests compiled by the Country Land and Business Association Cymru found some live planning applications remain unresolved after two decades.

The CLA approached all 13 rural councils in Wales, with seven providing responses. Its findings suggest some authorities are falling well short of government decision-making targets, with only one in five applications decided on time in some areas and one council still sitting on 472 applications awaiting a decision.

Pembrokeshire had a live case dating back to March 2005, while Monmouthshire reported eight outstanding cases from between 2008 and 2017 and 472 applications still awaiting consideration.

Denbighshire reported deciding just 21.7 percent of applications on time, while Eryri National Park managed 33.3 percent and Carmarthenshire 50 percent. Pembrokeshire performed better at 74 percent, but this was still below the 80 percent benchmark stated on its own website.

The figures have prompted the CLA to call for urgent reform of what it described as rural Wales’s planning crisis.

Victoria Bond, director of CLA Cymru, said long delays were holding back rural businesses, housing and investment.

“You wouldn't ask an AI company to wait a decade to innovate. So why do we accept it in rural Wales?” she said.

Ms Bond said the planning system was “in crisis” and should be at the top of the new government’s agenda, warning that rural businesses were ready to invest, create jobs and provide homes but were being held back by delays.

“Across the countryside, businesses are full of drive, ideas and entrepreneurialism,” Ms Bond said.

“They are hungry to build, move fast, and create jobs and homes for their communities. Instead, their plans are gathering dust in a planning system that seems almost designed to punish ambition.”

Councils are legally required to decide minor planning applications within 56 days and major developments within 91 days, but five of the seven councils that responded said their average response times failed to meet these targets in 2025.

Average decision times ranged from 122 days in Carmarthenshire to 223 days in Denbighshire, according to the CLA.

The organisation said such delays could mean lost income for farming families seeking to convert buildings into small business units, tourism lets or other diversification projects.

Powys reported applications awaiting decisions for more than eight years, including a free-range egg production unit submitted in June 2018, which the CLA said had generated more than 91 pieces of correspondence.

Eryri National Park had 119 applications outstanding since 2021, while Anglesey reported that more than one in five applications were still awaiting a decision.

To reduce delays, the CLA is calling on the Welsh Government to expand permitted development rights so more rural businesses can diversify without waiting for full planning approval. It is also calling on the Senedd to fund two additional planning officers for every local planning authority, including National Parks.

The organisation said planning backlogs were also affecting rural housing delivery, with approval rates across responding councils at around six in ten.

Denbighshire reported a 60 percent approval rate, Anglesey 59 percent and Eryri National Park 61 percent.

In Denbighshire, some individual housing applications took 1,489 days, or more than four years, to reach a decision, while another took 1,045 days, almost three years.

In Monmouthshire, a 100 percent affordable housing scheme submitted in November 2018 remains pending, alongside a 110-home development submitted in October 2024.

The CLA said delays meant fewer options for young families trying to stay in the communities where they grew up.

Ms Bond said: “Every delay has a cost. Businesses lose money, plans lose momentum, and young people lose a chance to build a future in the communities where they grew up.”

The organisation is calling for red tape to be reduced so small numbers of homes can be built in a large number of villages.

Ms Bond said Plaid Cymru had promised rural voters “less bureaucracy, clearer timelines and faster decisions”.

“We need them to succeed,” she said.

“Rural Wales does not want another decade of lost growth, or of falling further behind our urban counterparts. It wants a planning system that backs ambition and lets communities build for the future.”

The CLA said polling carried out by CensusWide among 1,000 people across Wales’s most rural seats showed strong support for planning reform.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents agreed the next Welsh government should do more to enable small numbers of homes to be built in a large number of villages, while 68 percent agreed the planning system was delaying the jobs, homes and services people need.

A lack of affordable housing was cited as one of the three biggest issues facing rural communities in Wales.

The CLA said the findings showed planning reform would be an early test for the new Welsh government, with rural voters calling for faster decisions on homes, jobs and services.