Council hires more planners to tackle application delays

Canterbury City Council received £1.4 million in fees for planning applications in the last financial year – but blames any delays in dealing with them on a punishing workload.

The authority points out it is the second best performing council in Kent and has had to work intensively on the 4,000-house Mountfield Park development at south Canterbury and the 750home estate at Thanington, plus sites in Herne Bay.

It is insists it is taking on extra staff to cope with its workload caused by a flurry of development plans for the district.

A Freedom of Information Act request found that between March of 2015 and April of this year it took in £1,397,584 in planning application fees and £96,528 for pre-application advice.

Head of planning Simon Tho- mas said: “Since the start of this year, we have increased the size of our planning team to deal with the additional work load because we recognise the importance for all our customers, no matter how large or small their application, of timely decision making.

“Due to the increased workload, however, and the need to recruit additional staff, we did experience some small delays in processing applications earlier this year, but these have now been resolved.”

Canterbury processes more than 1,500 planning applications per year, the third highest of any local authority in Kent.

The council says that the big developments to the south and west of the city and those at Herne Bay and Hersden require serious attention.

Mr Thomas added: “Over the past year we have been considering the planning applications for a number of very large-scale strategic housing sites that are part of the draft local plan.

“This includes Mountfield Park in south Canterbury, which will see 4,000 new homes built on the site, and Thanington Park, 750 homes, in addition to large housing sites near Herne Bay.

“As you would expect with sites of this scale, dealing with these applications has taken up considerable resource and time within the planning team but at the same time we have still also managed to meet and, in fact, exceed the requirements laid down by the government’s statutory timescales we have to meet in terms of deciding planning applications.”

The Freedom of Information Act request also revealed that the council had hired 11 extra planning officers and had spent £9,830 on training for planning staff between March of last year and April of this.

What are your experiences of dealing with the planning department at the city council? Email kentishgazette@thekmgroup. co.uk or write to Gazette House, Estuary View Business Park, Whitstable, CT5 3SE.