Councillors have raised concerns that recruitment issues with planning department staff is deterring investment.
A meeting of Newry, Mourne and Down District Council’s audit committee this week heard the HR issue has become a ‘major risk’ to the local authority.
The lack of recruitment has been seen as playing a part in planning delays.
The most up to date performance report has shown an increase of 513 weeks in the average processing time of major planning applications and 28.6 weeks for local applications.
Sinn Fein’s Oonagh Hanlon said: “To pick up on planning and recruitment in the council, I think the two go hand in hand.
“At the minute I think it would be remiss of us as an audit committee not to note the risk that the planning issues are having across the district.
“My fear would be that is it actually detracting from investment, which is going to have an overall impact for the district.
“I do recognise the challenges that HR (human resources) are having in recruiting the staff, but I suppose since I have been a councillor since 2019, it only seems to have went one way, and that is getting worse.
“It’s about putting some solid actions in place that is really going to make a difference, not only for us as councillors overseeing planning, but also for the general public.
“For applicants it is costing people money, even for smaller projects, they could lose a builder due to delays by planning and the cost of materials is also going up.
“So we do need to get a handle on this in every way we can to move forward.”
Deputy NMDDC chairperson, Gareth Sharvin (SDLP) added: “To go even further for our local economy, it could come to a stage where people are going to lose jobs because planning applications are not being approved, people won’t have work to actually work on.
“I was at an event recently where there were two chief executives of other councils who are also experiencing the same problems with planning.
“Lisburn and Castelreagh was one of the chief executives, he took one of their staff members and now they’ve taken one back.
“We are competing within a small pool of resources that have that skill.
“For the next audit committee meeting, it would be good to see where we are at with recruitment when it comes to planning.”
Committee chairperson, Brona Slevin responded: “I would ask the officers to bring back a report in relation to planning, as it is as you have identified and we know is one of the major risks facing the council at the moment with a significant governance issue going forward.
“Therefore I think it is important for this committee to be informed on what is happening on the planning side.
“We don’t tend to get those reports, we’ve asked for them in the past and I know other committees deal with this, but as an audit committee we need sight of this as well to each future audit committee in the future.”
