Planning performance statistics: annual and quarterly reports, 2016-2017

13. Major Developments by Planning Authority, 2016/17

As in the previous section results are only given for post 3rd August applications. Results for all applications can be found in the detailed excel tables at: http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Planning

13.1 Major Developments - by development type, 2016/17

Chart 62: Major Developments by planning authority and development type, 2016/17 ¹

1. The number in brackets gives the total number of major development decisions by planning authority (excluding processing agreements). See Section 2 for further details of processing agreements.

The chart shows information on the case mix for each planning authority, ordered by housing followed by other developments. Overall there were 246 decisions made for major developments in 2016/17. In addition and not shown in the above chart there were 95 decisions made for major developments that used processing agreements. Glasgow made the most decisions (33) for major planning applications with 14 for housing, 18 for other major developments and 1 for business and industry developments. In addition Glasgow used processing agreements for a further four major developments. Edinburgh used processing agreements for eleven of their major development decisions and when these are included Edinburgh made 34 decisions in total on major developments. Aberdeenshire made the most decisions for major developments using processing agreements with 93.8% (15 out of 16) of these meeting agreed timescales.

13.2 Major Developments - average decision times, 2016/17

The following chart shows the average decision times for major developments ordered by the number of decisions made for major developments in each planning authority. In total there were 246 decisions made on major developments in 2016/17 with an overall average decision time of 37.0 weeks. A further 95 major developments that were subject to a processing agreement are not included in these average decision times.

Chart 63: Major Developments by planning authority, 2016/17: Average decision time (weeks)

Numbers of decisions made for major developments are very small compared to those for local developments and the average decision times at local authority level are likely to be volatile. The case mix also has an influence on average decision times. The lengthy average time for major developments in Midlothian was partly due to one application that took over three years for a decision on planning permission in principle for a residential development on a 4.5 hectare site with associated car parking and access.

Cairngorms National Park, Clackmannanshire, Na h-Eileanan Siar, North Ayrshire, Orkney Islands, Scottish Borders and South Ayrshire did not make any decisions for major developments that were subject to average time calculations in 2016/17 and are therefore not included in the charts in this section. Instead Cairngorms National Park, Na h-Eileanan Siar, North Ayrshire, Scottish Borders and South Ayrshire used processing agreements for all of their major developments. Percentages that were agreed within agreed timescales can be seen in Table 1 of Planning Authority Performance Statistics 2016/17 Annual.

The following table is an extract from Annual, 2016/17: Table 2 and allows comparison of the average decision times for major applications between years.

Table 8: Major Applications: Average Decision Time

Due to the small numbers of major applications, especially at local authority level, average times are more variable. However, East Ayrshire, Inverclyde and West Lothian have all improved their overall average decision time by over 30% compared to 2015/16.