Targets missed on planning applications in Mid Ulster

MID Ulster District Council’s planning department failed to meet two of its three statutory targets in 2021/22, it has been confirmed.

However the statistics found in the Department for Infrastructure’s planning statistics bulletin show that the council’s planners are making improvements against the statutory targets set out in the Local Government (Performance Indicators and Standards) Order (Northern Ireland) 2015 when compared with 2020/21.

These targets concern the average processing time of major applications – the target is an average of 30 weeks for planners to reach a decision once an application is lodged; the average processing time of local applications – the target is an average of 15 weeks for planners to reach a decision and; the percentage of enforcement cases concluded within 39 weeks with the target set at 70 per-cent.

The bulletin notes between April 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022, the council received 1,452 planning applications, a decrease of 5.34 per cent on the number of applications received between April 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021 (1,534) .

Just like 20/21 this figure means the council received the third highest number of applications across all local authority areas.

Across Northern Ireland, 12,914 planning decisions were issued, an increase of 23.2 per cent from 2020/21 when 10,483 decisions were issued.

The number of applications decided by the council during the 2021/22 year was 1,423 an increase of almost 18 per cent on 2020/21’s figure of 1208.

This was, just like 2020/21, the third highest number of decisions reached by any council and accounts for more than 11 per-cent of the 12,914 planning decisions issued across Northern Ireland during this period.

Across Northern Ireland, the approval rate for all planning applications was 94.9 per cent, a decrease from the 95.7 per cent approval rating reported in 2020/21. In Mid Ulster the approval rate was 98.9 per cent for the year 2022/22, this is the highest approval rate of any council in Northern Ireland.

At the end of March 2022, there were 8,236 live applications in the planning system across Northern Ireland, the highest end-of-year live count since March 2012 and 22.5 per cent of applications were over one year old.

Mid Ulster District Council recorded 262 applications over a year old or 26.9 per cent of all live applications in the system more than one year old at the end of March 2022.

It took the council, on average, 16.6 weeks to issue a decision on local applications in 2021/22, an increase of 0.6 weeks on 2020/21 when the council took 16 weeks on average to issue a decision.

Across Northern Ireland, average processing time for local application brought to a decision during 2021/22 was 17.2 weeks, a decrease of 0.6 weeks when compared to 2020/21. However, this figure is still above the statutory target of 15 weeks.

Mid Ulster District Council received 10 major planning applications during this period, the same number as in the previous financial year but managed to issue 13 decisions on major applications, seven more than in 2020/21.

The average processing times for these applications took 88 weeks. The statutory target is for major development planning applications to be processed from the date valid to decision issues within an average of 30 weeks. The average processing time across Northern Ireland to decide major applications during the 2021/22 period was 49.8 weeks. During 2021/22, the council’s planning department brought 105 enforcement cases to a conclusion.