Publication - Statistics

Planning performance statistics 2019/2020: annual

Published: 21 July 2020
Part of: Building, planning and design
ISBN: 9781839608971

Summary statistics on planning decision-making and timescales for April 2019 to March 2020 with historic data going back to 2012/13. It is based on data collected by the Scottish Government from Local and Planning Authorities as part of the Planning Performance Framework (introduced in 2012).

Planning statistics

Supporting documents

4. Processing Agreements

Some local authorities use processing agreements where the developer and the local authority agree on timescales for decisions. Some agreements are made at the outset of an application whereas others have been activated at a later stage.

Applications subject to a processing agreement are not included in average decision time calculations.

For 2019/20 there were 2,412 applications subject to a processing agreement, 7.1% of all applications. 78.1% of these were processed within agreed timescales.

1,981 applications subject to a processing agreement were for local developments with 79.6% processed within agreed timescales. This represents 7.5% of all local development applications concluded in 2019/20.

The 103 major applications concluded by the use of a processing agreement, 66.0% of which were processed within agreed timescales, represents 33.6% of all major development applications determined in 2019/20.

24 out of 34 planning authorities used processing agreements in 2019/20.

Fife, Aberdeenshire and Scottish Borders with 546, 494, and 441 processing agreements respectively had just over 61% of the total number of agreements.