CHANGES in the BCP Council planning department have been “seismic” according to a senior councillor.

While portfolio holder Cllr Bobbie Dove praised the efforts of staff to address issues, she added: “This is a journey and we haven’t quite realised our destination yet.”

Cllr Dove told the council’s place overview and scrutiny committee that the department had achieved a 40 per cent reduction in its backlog of applications and agreed an improvement plan which would speed up the process overall – paying extra attention to major applications.

Deputy council leader Phil Broadhead said the authority was the sixth biggest planning authority in the country for major applications and the tenth for non-major proposals, which he said should be welcomed because it meant people were investing in the area.

Independent councillor Steve Bartlett said there had been a tremendous effort to make improvements and he had confidence in the improvement plan.

“There has been a suggestion that the morale of the team is low – but it shouldn’t be. They have done a really first-class job here,” he said.

He said there has been “a perfect storm” in trying to bring three planning departments and different systems together, coupled with the disruptions of Covid and a rise in applications.

A paper with the report revealed that although there had been a fall in the backlog, there were still more than 400 applications waiting to be dealt with by the council.

Councillors have been told that there has been a “specific focus” on reducing backlogs which, in turn, will allow new applications to be dealt with more quickly.

The committee heard that the department started out with 29 vacancies, but had now taken on 13 new staff, filling some of the other positions with agency staff. It continues to advertise although there is a national shortage of qualified planning officers.

Cllr Lesley Dedman said the staff figures and the pressures they are under left her feeling worried for their welfare.

Cllr Andy Hadley said he still had concerns about what the targets were for the council to be told by head of planning Nick Perrins that, currently, there was no target although the authority would hope to eventually be in the top end of the performance tables.

Many of the performance issues have stemmed from the pandemic, which changed working patterns, vacancy levels and an increase in planning applications.

The difficulties were compounded by different IT systems being in use, dating back to the days prior to 2019, when there were three councils areas.

Further work being planned includes a “clearance fortnight” from June 20th when staff will concentrate on further clearing backlog applications.

Also taking place in June is the launch of as Major Applications Forum and a new process for planning legal agreements, together with a new process for registering and validating applications.