Planning performance statistics: quarterly reports - April to September 2019-2020

Applications for Major Developments (excludes legacy cases)

There were 171 decisions on Major developments in the first six months of 2019/20, two fewer than in the same period in the previous year. The average decision time for the 114 of these not subject to processing agreements was 31.7 weeks, more than three weeks quicker than the 35.1 weeks for the same period in 2018/19.

Chart 2: Applications for Major Developments (excluding legacy cases)

The average decision time figures of 30.8 and 32.7 weeks for quarters one and two have been influenced by a number of lengthier decision times, including 18 decision times of longer than a year – eleven in quarter one and seven in quarter two. One of the eleven in quarter one and four of the seven in quarter two had decision times of longer than two years. The longest in quarter two taking 3.8 years.

Further information on the distribution of decision times for major development applications is given in Annex A.

In quarter one of 2019/20 there were 27 major development applications with processing agreements, 59.3% (16) met agreed timescales that had been set between developers and local authorities. In quarter two there were 30, 70.0% (21) meeting the agreed timescales.

In quarter one major applications with processing agreements accounted for 31% of all the decisions made for major developments (27 of 87). In quarter two this increased to 36%, 30 of 84 major applications.