Agenda item

(enforcement annex to follow)

The Committee considered the performance report which evaluated the performance of the Development Management service over the last 2 financial years.

It was clarified to the Committee that the report did not need to be reported to the Executive.

Over the last 2 years workloads in the Development Management Team remained high; and Officers were often reliant on extension of time agreements for determination of applications. Despite this, changes to bolster resource had been made including the recruitment of a new Senior Planning Officer to work alongside the Corporate Enforcement Team. The vast majority of applications had continued to be determined under delegated authority with only 5% of applications being determined by the Planning Applications Committee.

The Council’s planning appeals performance had dipped slightly in the past year. Two thirds of delegated decisions had been upheld by the Planning Inspectorate, whilst half of applications, which had been determined by the Planning Applications Committee, had been upheld at appeal.

It was acknowledged that in general the service had performed well. However, there was still room to further develop the Council’s pre-application service, improve customer care and ease reliance on extension of time agreements.

The Committee acknowledged that the planning enforcement service had improved significantly over the last year, which had enabled Ward Councillors to liaise with constituents more effectively on enforcement matters. However it was noted greater resource was still required; and that the Council was midway through the recruitment of a new compliance officer. Furthermore, there was an ongoing necessity to develop the Council’s use of the Uniform software solution to allow for easy extraction of data in respect of enforcement cases. It was agreed that Officers would report back to Committee members in respect of a timeline to undertake the work.

There was discussion in respect of how the Council could improve its performance at appeals. Whilst in respect of Committee overturns on character reasons the Planning Inspectorate had not deemed the Committee’s decision making to be unreasonable, it was acknowledged that there were significant training opportunities for Members and Officers on topics such as 5 year housing land supply and greenbelt matters.

RESOLVED that the performance report and associated enforcement annex be noted.