Planning performance statistics: annual report 2018-2019

4. Processing Agreements

Some local authorities use processing agreements (Annual, 2018/19: Table 1), where the developer and the local authority agree on timescales for decisions. Some processing agreements are made at the outset of an application whereas others have been activated at a later stage.

Applications subject to a processing agreement are not included in average decision time calculations and are reported separately in this section. 

For the year 2018/19 there were a total of 2,716 applications that were subject to a processing agreement, with 75.3% of these processed within agreed timescales. This is an increase of 29% in the number of applications with processing agreements compared  with the previous year.

Chart 34: Applications for Local Developments with processing agreements

Chart 35: Applications for Major Developments with processing agreements

Of the 2,716 applications that were subject to a processing agreement in 2018/19, 2,129 were for local developments with 76.6% processed within agreed timescales. This represents 7.8% of all local development applications concluded in 2018/19. The proportion of local applications that have processing agreements continues to increase each year.

The 118 major applications concluded by the use of a processing agreement,  73.7% of which were processed within agreed timescales, represents 36.3% of all major development applications concluded in 2018/19. The proportion of major applications with processing agreements has increased substantially since the previous year.

Chart 36: Proportion of applications with processing agreements

30 out of 34 planning authorities used processing agreements in 2018/19. 

Fife, Aberdeenshire and Scottish Borders with 478, 473, and 405  processing agreements respectively had half of the total number of agreements.