Planning performance recognised by government
The council’s planning team has been acknowledged for the second year running by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) for their work in improving planning performance.
The Borough Council’s planning team is continuing to out-perform government targets, with over 80% of minor applications being determined within eight weeks or within agreed timeframes.
Writing about the performance, DLUHC commented: “I note the actions your authority has taken which has led to improved and sustained performance over the last year.”
The government measures average performance over a two-year period, during which the council was open about the severe staffing issues in its planning team in late 2020 until September 2022. This came at a time when planning applications were at an all-time high.
However, new members of staff have joined existing planning officers to improve the customer focus and response. Residents have seen a vast improvement in the responses and updates to their queries in the last 18 months, while the speed of processing applications has also increased with the council within the ‘top five most improved Councils nationally’.
The council now performs consistently above the government’s performance thresholds for both minor and major applications and has done since from October 2022. As well as this, over 80 per cent of all minor applications have been turned around within target times since January 2023 which is well above the government’s target of 70 per cent.
Executive Member for Planning Councillor Bill Crooks said:
I am delighted that the Government has acknowledged and recognised the hard work of our planning team and the sustained improvement in the service we provide to our residents.
Unfortunately, the Government’s reporting tool focusses on a historical two-year rolling period, years October 2021 to September 2023 and as we have previously highlighted to the DLUHC and acknowledged publicly the period of 2021 and into 2022 was a difficult time for our planning department. However great strides have been made and our current targets are at the correct level if not higher than government targets and have been for the past 18 months.
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