Claims that planning decisions are taking too long at Gwynedd Council

A councillor has claimed that some planning applications in Gwynedd are taking up to a year to consider, amid calls for a speeding up of the process.

Cllr Aeron Maldwyn Jones made the claim during Thursday’s full council meeting after being made aware of cases where constituents were seeing delays well beyond the average waiting time for planning consent to be issued.

The authority’s annual performance report for 2020/21 stated that long-term sickness and the pandemic forcing changes to working practices was largely responsible for a slipping in the average time taken to issue a decision, increasing from 62 days in 2019/20 to 89 days in 2020/21.
“The report states that the average is 89 days to make a decision, but I had one that took a year which is totally unacceptable,” said Cllr Jones, during the virtual meeting.
“When I raised this with the planning department it was then they found that the officer responsible was off sick.
“How much overseeing are the managers doing over officers working from home to ensure their mental health is okay and are ok in themselves, it took me to make a complaint for them to find out that an officer was ill.
“I have others approaching a year now and there’s no reason for it. It’s totally unacceptable to take so long.
“I appreciate that Covid slows things down a bit but not as much as a year.”

In response,  Chief Executive Dafydd Gibbard said, “I can’t comment on individual cases but it’s important to note that council staff have been through a period of great change over the past 18 months and have coped brilliantly.
“In regards to overseeing, I’d rather look at it as support and they do need help when working from afar and there is help there to support staff.”

In relation to planning waiting times, the performance report noted, “Between March and July 2020 no planning committees were held due to Covid-19 restrictions. Therefore it was not possible to determine those applications that required submitting to the committee.

“Furthermore, lack of capacity as a result of long-term sickness and working arrangements during the pandemic has meant that processes are taking longer than usual.
“It has also taken longer for us to receive responses from statutory consultees. Consequently, in 2020/21 planning applications took an average of 89 days to be determined compared to 62 days in 2019/20.”

By Gareth Williams – Local Democracy Reporter