<p>The government has published its Business and Planning Bill, which includes temporary changes to the planning system to address the coronavirus crisis and “support economic recovery”.</p> <p>Under the Bill, planning permission deadlines can be extended and construction working hours modified with the legislation also dealing with planning appeals, online inspection of documents, compulsory purchase orders (CPOs), development consent orders (DCOs), local development documents and spatial development strategies.</p> <p>In one example of the above, the government is considering amendments to secondary legislation to enable more consultations and publicity for planning appeals to take place online, according to a Written Ministerial Statement (WMS) from housing minister Christopher Pincher. </p> <p>The Bill will allow those sites with an expiry date between the start of lockdown and the end of the year to have their consents extended to April 1 2021, as announced earlier this week. </p> <p>It will also enable faster planning appeals, with the Planning Inspectorate permitted to choose more than one type of procedure to deal with an appeal.</p> <p>And the legislation will introduce a “new, fast track application process” for the modification of construction site working hours. “This new process is to enable the facilitation of safe construction working practices …