Planning Authority Performance Statistics 2013/14

12. Local Developments by Planning Authority, 2013/14

Since a few legacy cases can skew results, particularly at planning authority level, results in this section are only given for post-3^rd August applications. Results for all applications can be found in the detailed excel tables at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Planning

12.1 Local Developments - by development type, 2013/14

The chart shows information on the case mix for each planning authority, ordered by the most frequent (householder) applications. For the twelve planning authorities: East Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire, Edinburgh, East Lothian, Clackmannanshire, Aberdeen City, Midlothian, North Lanarkshire, South Ayrshire, West Dunbartonshire, Fife and Stirling over half of decisions made on local developments were for householder applications. At the other end of the scale Cairngorms made no decisions on householder applications. The case mix may have an influence on overall average decision times within a particular authority. For example, given that householder applications are on average decided quicker than other types, it might be expected that overall average decision times will be lower for those planning authorities that have a higher proportion of householder applications in their case mix.

12.2 Local Developments - average decision times, 2013/14

The chart below shows the average decision times for local developments ordered by the number of decisions made for local developments in each planning authority. In total there were 30,026 decisions made on local developments in 2013/14 with an overall average decision time of 10.6 weeks.

It should be expected that Cairngorms has a longer average decision time as they have no householder applications in their case mix. Also Cairngorms do not receive planning applications directly but are notified of applications which have been made to those planning authorities within the national park boundaries. Cairngorms may then decide to call applications in for their determination. Planning applications are likely to have already been in the system for a number of weeks before being transferred to Cairngorms. Due to these reasons average times for Cairngorms applications can be expected to be higher than those of the other planning authorities.

The average decision time for Scottish Borders, who have cleared through some older cases, has been skewed by several applications from 2009 and 2010, including eleven applications from 2009 but were after 3^rd August and so are still included in post-3^rd August applications. Without these eleven applications the average time would reduce to 14.8 weeks.

Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Clackmannanshire and East Dunbartonshire have not stopped the clock on any of their applications in 2013/14. Average decision times for these local authorities may be higher than otherwise, and higher than those authorities who are able to report delays in decision making.

12.3 Local Developments - percentages under two months, 2013/14

The following chart shows the percentages of decisions made in under two months ordered by the number of decisions made by each planning authority.

At Scotland level the percentage of decisions made in under two months was 72.7%. Aberdeenshire made the most decisions on local developments (2,913) and 69.9% of these were made within 2 months.

The following table is an extract from Annual, 2013/14 - Table 4 and allows comparison with results from the previous year.

Table 5: Local Applications: Average Time & Percentage under 2 months

Moray, North Lanarkshire, Falkirk, West Lothian, Aberdeenshire & North Ayrshire have all improved their average decision times by over 20% compared to 2012/13.