DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT AND LAND CHARGES PERFORMANCE UPDATE
This is the quarterly report on planning applications and appeals for the period from July to
September 2011, covering the turnround of applications, workload and appeal outcomes.
Figures are included for land charge searches.
Table 1A (Appendix D) sets out performance in processing planning applications for the
second quarter of 2011/12.
Four major applications were determined in the quarter, 129 minor applications and 205
‘other’ applications. Speed of determination of minor and other cases fell again, by a further
10% on minor cases and some 3% on ‘other’ cases; these are the lowest quarterly returns in
almost 20 years. In terms of the cumulative impact for the current financial year, major
cases stand at some 50%, minor cases at a little over 37% and ‘other’ cases at almost 51%.
Table 1B indicates workload for the service. Slightly fewer applications were submitted in
Quarter 2 than the first quarter, although pre-application enquiries, “Do I need planning
permission?”, and duty officer enquiries all increased during the quarter. It is difficult to
interpret these figures in terms of indicating whether workload trends are moving upwards or
downwards, reflecting uncertainties in the local economy.
A decision from the Government on future funding arrangements for development
management, which has been awaited throughout 2011, would greatly assist in securing the
necessary resources for the service. This would enable appropriate staffing arrangements
to be put in place for the medium to long term.
Since the end of the quarter a year-out planning graduate has taken up her post and the two
trainee planning officers have graduated successfully, enabling them to spend additional
time in the office. If overall workload remains static or falls it is hoped that these changes
will enable performance to begin to recover, but this will not be rapid while a backlog of out
of time cases remains in the system. It is clearly essential that the situation is monitored
closely.
In terms of delegation of decisions, the quarter concerned and cumulative figures are close
to 92% and not therefore significantly different from the previous two years.
In terms of planning appeals, two appeals were allowed and four dismissed in the quarter so
that cumulatively only 22.2% of appeals were determined against the Council’s decision.
As far as land charge searches are concerned, Table 3 indicates that in the second quarter
of 2011/12 (July-Sept) 523 Official Searches were processed with an average response time
of 2 days. Including Personal Searches the total searches for the quarter amounted to 687,
Personal Searches on average accounting for 24% of the total.
(Source: Steve Oxenham, Head of Planning and Building Control)