Staff turnaround at a Northern Ireland council has resulted in “emails in the ether” causing major delays for planning applicants.
The apparent unexplained loss of planning data has only just come to light according to one councillor.
Newry, Mourne and Down District Council’s (NMDDC) strategy, policy and resources (SPR) committee was told this week that the local authority is “set up to fail” improvement objectives set for the coming financial year (2025-26).
NMDDC statistics show the average processing time for local planning applications has steadily increased to 44 weeks processing time (2024-25) with a target set for less than 15 weeks going forward.
SDLP cllr, Gareth Sharvin said: “I understand the target of 15 weeks is a statutory requirement, but I think as a council we also have to be realistic.
“If you look at the trends over the last number of years, they have been going the wrong way. Should we not be putting in a target of our own?
“We are setting ourselves up to fail.”
NMDDC has previously come under fire for its poor performance in planning, when its average processing times for major applications reached almost 155 weeks (2023-24).The regional average was 59 weeks.
Currently major applications (2024-25) at NMDDC stand at 73 weeks processing time with a target of less than 30 weeks for the upcoming year.
Concerns were previously raised over the local authority’s failure to recruit staff causing poor performance within the planning department.
Sinn Fein rep, Oonagh Hanlon added: “In the management of staff turnover, increasingly I am having planning applicants and agents coming to me, after somebody (council planning staff) has left and their emails are hanging somewhere in the ether, even though the agent or architect has sent in further information.
“That then goes back to the applicant that basically NMDDC are not even reading the emails or following up on staff that have left.
“If somebody is leaving the organisation, where do those emails go to?
“We know it is delaying the application through no fault of anybody. It is something that just came to light today (March 13).
“It’s difficult for us as councillors to stand over that.”
In September 2024, the council stated that it had carried out 13 recruitment drives in the last two years for the planning department. The SPR committee at that time agreed to employ additional officers at an extra cost to ratepayers to help cut major delays to planning applications.
CEO Marie Ward responded: “I don’t disagree with the councillor (Gareth Sharvin) at all. We started a process with our corporate and senior management team looking at our business plan on the year coming in and targets.
“I would be very keen on looking at what that looks like and not just saying tonight on the hoof what the targets should be.”
She added: “We can certainly look at the diversion of emails.
“What we should be doing is when somebody leaves we should be diverting their inbox to another location or at least putting a message on the inbox, saying the person is no longer with the organisation.
“There has been long and many a debate around the staffing structures within planning and senior management has previously said we are at a point where we actually have a full complement at this stage. Nobody has left in the last couple of weeks. So, we are getting there on that side.
“It is really difficult to reallocate work when there are already significant case loads for each of the officers.
“We will take all comments on board when looking at management of targets on the year ahead.”
