As is widely acknowledged, when the Planning Service transferred from the Department of the Environment (DoE) to Newry, Mourne and Down District Council on 1 April 2015, the Council inherited the largest backlog of live applications of any of the eleven new councils.
The historical data showed that the Newry Mourne and Down District Council area receives more new planning applications than any other council area, and the DoE nevertheless only provided one eleventh of its overall resource. The Council was therefore handed an almost unmanageable backlog and an inadequate level of resource to effectively process it.
The Department of Infrastructure (DoI) have recently released the 2015-2016 Planning Statistics, and despite the difficulties faced, they showed a dramatic reduction in the size of the transferred backlog and a significant improvement in processing times when comparing applications transferred from the DoE, to applications received by Newry Mourne and Down District Council since taking over the service.
The statistics indicated that 820, or 70%, of the 1,183 legacy applications inherited by the Council from the DoE had been determined by 31 March 2016.
Newry, Mourne and Down District Council Chief Executive, Liam Hannaway said, “Newry Mourne and Down District Council is committed to continuing service improvement in regards to processing times and is confident that the actions we are taking will bring about further improvements in the Planning Service during this financial year.”
In addition, while the Council’s average processing times for major applications received before transfer was 63 weeks, the average processing time for applications received by Council after the service transferred was 22.2 weeks, which represents a reduction of 40.8 weeks in the average processing time for new applications. For minor applications, this reduction was 15.8 weeks.”
