PLANNING decision times are at last hitting government targets according to the latest league tables, but East Hampshire District Council may not be out of the woods yet. Councillors will have to wait until after Christmas to discover whether they must repay government grant received for last year's planning performance. These performance figures were found to be wrong because of major blunders in the way officers had measured decision times. The council has had an appalling planning record for several years, finally resulting in EHDC being designated a poor performing "standards authority" in 2001. And for the last three years it has been monitored and set special planning targets by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) in a bid to scrape it off the bottom of the league tables. Last year councillors congratulated themselves on reaching two of the three government targets set for major, minor and other planning applications. But they were later forced to re-examine them after an allegation of irregularities and an internal audit found that the council had in fact failed to meet any of the government targets. But according to figures released last week by the ODPM, the council has finally met its targets for this year. These have propelled its league table position from among the 50 worst planning authorities in the country to an above-average performing planning authority. From October 2003 to September 2004, the council decided 60 per cent (58 plans) of its major applications within 13 weeks, hitting the target on the head. It decided 66 per cent (570 ) of its minor applications in eight weeks and 83 per cent (1,578 plans) in eight weeks. And for the last quarter, from July to September this year, the picture for EHDC was particularly rosy. The planning department decided 74 per cent (19) majors in 13 weeks - the target was 60 per cent; 75 per cent of its minors (168) in eight weeks - target 65 per cent; and 86 per cent (436) of the others in eight weeks - target 80 per cent. Announcing the figures last Friday, planning minister Keith Hill said: "These figures show that our combination of targets and resources is having a very positive effect on decision. "I know a lot of councils have worked really hard to drive up performance and they should be commended for that. I am aware that there have been accusations that these performance figures may have been brought about by councils in some cases adopting unacceptable behaviour to meet targets." Mr Hill added: "Research we have commissioned has found no overall evidence of this, but we do listen very carefully to what people tell us about this and if we find systematic abuses we will act quickly. We are committed firmly to targets for handling applications, but these must not be bought at the expense of quality. We have performance indicators that look at the quality of decision- making as well as speed." East Hampshire District Council received a £90,000 planning delivery grant last year for its performance. After an internal audit, revised figures were sent to the ODPM and councillors are still waiting to hear how the grant will be affected. Figures for the previous year, October 2001 to September 2002, now also seem to be in doubt. As a result of these figures, EHDC received a government grant of £273,000, one of the highest government planning performance grants allocated that year. And it was based on these statistics that the Conservatives went to the district council elections boasting how they had turned around planning decision times in East Hampshire. But this year, the ODPM asked the council to make a brief examination of the figures again and officers have since set out on another audit of the figures. A spokesman for the ODPM told The Herald this week: "A decision on any reimbursement of grant to councils has not yet been made, it is very unlikely that it will now be done before Christmas." But he said the government's latest Planning Delivery funding document, based on this year's planning performance figures, was due to be published yesterday (Thursday). Bill Price, strategic manager for EHDC, said: "We have undertaken an internal audit and ourselves contacted the ODPM to say we thought some of the figures submitted were incorrect. Our planning grant was £200,000, we estimated that £90,000 of this was related to performance statistics. "Although some of the figures were incorrect we had been steadily improving and will be entititled to some of the grant. "Until the ODPM come back to us with their decision we will not know how much, if any, we might have to repay and budget provisions are in hand so that there would be no effect on the council tax payer."
