Somerset Council is asking applicants to stop chasing for updates as part of a 12-week action plan launched on Monday (28 July) to reduce its planning application backlog.
The plan involves “specific critical action” to support planning application teams, including reducing the time planning officers spend on meetings or site visits and only accepting amendments to applications in limited circumstances.
The council is also introducing a new triage approach for first-time applications to speed up decision-making.
Planning teams are having ‘all-in’ office-based days to support these measures.
“The council is aware that these measures are not ideal, but it is taking critical action now to tackle the immediate issues,” said Somerset Council. “This will allow the council to put longer-term plans in place.”
There are almost 1,700 outstanding applications across the local authority’s five planning teams. However, previous mitigation initiatives contributed to reducing the backlog by 28% since Q1 2022/23, when there was a peak of 2,350 applications on hand, the council told CM.
The council said that the backlog is the result of “a number of issues”, including recruitment and staff retention challenges, problems with the IT systems following unitarisation and complex planning applications.
Councillor Mike Rigby, portfolio holder for economic development, planning and transportation, said: “This is an incredibly complex problem to solve, and we recognise that this critical action will impact on our residents. But it is necessary to bring work in progress down to a more manageable and sustainable standard and to make Somerset’s planning service a great place to work for current colleagues and prospective employees, and, most importantly, to improve our offer to our communities.
“These actions are aimed at improving our reputation with service users in the future and we ask for patience while we put these measures in place. It is a critical phase of a much wider programme of work to drive positive change in our service.”
