A £60,000 sum wrongly awarded to East Hampshire District Council on the basis of incorrect planning performance figures is to be returned to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The amount is part of the £240,000 paid out to the EHDC by the government when everything indicated that the council was meeting required planning performance targets. But following the revelation that the figures submitted to the ODPM were incorrect and made the council's planning decision-making look more efficient than it really was, the ODPM asked for the funds to be returned. The money is to be repaid from funds held back by the council when the alarm was sounded over the planning figures last year. As a result, the loss of the money will have no impact on council tax bills. "As soon as the discrepancies in the statistics came to light, the council informed the ODPM, so I agree with this decision," said Patrick Burridge, portfolio holder for development in t he EHDC cabinet. "I am glad this matter is being resolved and that the council is acting to bring in robust new procedures. I can also confirm that, most importantly, these statistical anomalies did not affect the final decisions on people's actual planning applications." It is hoped that the return of the funds will finally draw a line under the long-running saga, which resulted in the resignation of the council's head of planning control, Ian Ellis, last week. An internal investigation last summer revealed that the planning figures submitted to the ODPM were incorrect and that the method being used by planning officers to record planning application decision times were to blame. All planning authorities have to record how long it takes to make planning decisions, and targets are different for three different categories of planning applications: major, minor and others. Compiling the data involves comparing the start date (the date on which an application was received) with the date on which the decision notice was despatched. The despatch date is the date on which the documents are ready for posting, but until EHDC's computer system was upgraded in December 2003, it had no way of recording the despatch date separately from the date on which the decision was made. After figures had been declared that showed the council had exceeded two of the government's planning delivery targets and met one, an audit revealed that the planning department's performance had actually fallen below all three. Computer error was blamed for the problem, until an email came to light that hinted at some deliberate distortion of dates. The chief executive of the council, Will Godfrey, presented the final internal report on the matter this week. "The submission of the wrong figures was unacceptable and I have already apologised in public for this," he said. "We have responded to concerns and taken firm action to put right the problems. "I am confident that the service is back on track. We expect to appoint a new head of planning development shortly and we are making interim arrangements to make sure that service is maintained."
