Archived press release

Date Published: 02/11/06

Aylesbury Vale District Council’s planners are continuing to improve their turnaround figures for processing planning applications. Figures released by the council show that between July and September this year planners processed 79 per cen...

Aylesbury Vale District Council’s planners are continuing to improve their turnaround figures for processing planning applications.

Figures released by the council show that between July and September this year planners processed 79 per cent of major applications in 13 weeks, which is 19 per cent above the national government target.

This is a significant improvement in development control compared to the last financial year when the council only processed 48 per cent of major applications within the statutory time period.

The figures for the July-September period also reveal that the council processed 70 per cent of minor applications in eight weeks (five per cent above the national target) and 92 per cent of other applications, such as extensions to houses or garages, in eight weeks (12 per cent above the national target).

AVDC has introduced changes to improve and speed up the planning application process in order to meet demanding government performance targets. These changes include giving technical advice to applicants before major applications are submitted, active management of applications as they pass through the process and close working with other agencies who comment on planning applications.

Any failure to meet national performance targets can detrimentally affect the amount of government money given to councils to support planning services.

Councillor Derrick Isham, Chairman of the Development Control Committee, praised the work of the development control team for improving their performance. “Over the past six months, we have managed to improve the speed of processing major planning applications so much that we are now far exceeding government targets. We developed a strategy to improve our planning performance and I am pleased to say that we have seen a good improvement. This is due largely to the very hard work of our development control team,” he said.

“Shortening the time of processing applications will assist developers to be able to develop much earlier. Aylesbury Vale is facing considerable growth in the future and it is essential that the council deals with the delivery of this growth quickly and efficiently,” he added.

People who would like to take advantage of the council’s online planning service should go to www.aylesburyvaledc.gov.uk and follow the link from the homepage.