Wednesday 21 July 2010

Reduction in Planning Application Fee income

Most planning authorities have seen a significant downturn in the number of planning applications, none more so than Powys. All planning authorities depend on planning application fees to deliver the planning service. However there is an enormous black hole in Powys who has lost some £353,000 in fee income last year as a result in the downturn in the economy which resulted in far fewer planning applications being received. Luckily they had a last minute grant of £95,000 from the Welsh Assembly to deal with windfarm issues.

This year's blackhole will be "managed" by the Council for sure; however there doesn't appear to be a clear strategy from the Council to effectively manage future deficits arising from the continued reduction in fee income. Other authorities have pruned back staffing levels to compensate for the downturn and reduced workload. Powys is hit by a double whammie in effect as the nature of Powys' planning application workload is predominantly small scale domestic planning applications that generate small fees. Even in the best of times the Council would receive a very small number of major schemes that would bring in the high fees and generate the income necessary to subsidise the staffing structure. What is worrying is that there are now a large number of senior officers dealing with relatively small number of small scale planning applications. This is not cost effective and will be difficult to sustain long term. So what does Powys Council intend to do and will the "review" noted elsewhere in an earlier blog deal with the issue?

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