Decision details

The Select Committee received a report form N Richardson, Assistant Director (Development Management) who advised that at the last meeting of the Select Committee on the 3 October, the Committee received a report regarding the Key Performance Indicators 2017/18 – Quarter 1, in respect of planning application turnaround times, which showed that the targets set were being achieved

Councillor Knapman, who was a substitute at the meeting of the Governance Select Committee on the 3 October, asked if these statistics were accurate, as he understood more to be instances of applications getting near to the 8 week deadline, withdrawn then re-submitted a few weeks later and the 8 week deadline would start again.

The Committee asked for a report to be brought to this meeting with further detail from Officers, as the Assistant Director of Governance (Development Management) was not present at the meeting on the 3 October.

Mr Richardson advised that there were 1,714 planning application decisions issued over the last year and it was noted that 40 of these had been withdrawn by the applicant with no resubmission made, 24 had been refused planning permission and 32 had been withdrawn and then a revised/new planning application had been submitted which represented just over 1.4% of the total. Therefore the instances of applications getting near to the 8 week deadline, withdrawn and then resubmitted were very low.

However, running through all the planning applications in this time period, the grounds for refusal, some of which have been committee reversals made by members, have then been the subject of negotiation with officers and in most cases a more positive decision on a resubmission was made through a fresh planning application.

            RESOLVED:

(1)             That the Select Committee noted those planning applications resubmitted following a previous application being withdrawn or refused planning permission were a very small percentage of all planning decisions made; and

(2)             That the quarterly return of the three planning application type Key Performance Indicator (KPI) was accurate and in line with the KPI criteria and measures set by the Department of Communities and Local Government.