North Yorkshire Council says its planning department — previously branded as “diabolical” — is seeing staffing improvements.
A number of new planning officers had joined the council to cover the Richmond constituency area in recent months, with further recruitment underway, a meeting heard.
Fiona Hunter, development management team manager, said the service had recently welcomed two new principal planners, alongside a senior planner.
“We’ve had two new principal planners join us since the start of this calendar year; we also had a senior planner join us in December, all covering this area,” she said.
The officer added that the council was continuing to recruit further, including plans to bring in an additional career-grade planning officer.
She said this would help balance workloads and ensure applications were dealt with more efficiently.
She also indicated that managers were considering whether further senior-level support could be added.
At present, she said the service was moving in a “positive direction”, with early signs that improvements in processing times were already being seen.
The council hopes that, once new recruits are fully embedded, performance will stabilise further and applications will increasingly be determined within statutory deadlines.
The officer said that while it would take time for the expanded team to fully settle, she was optimistic about continued progress over the coming months.
“If you ask me again in a few months, I’ll be able to say that people are consistently getting applications in the statutory period,” she told councillors.
The update was provided following a request by Councillor Angus Thompson, who admitted he had previously “ranted and raved” about the service provided by the planning department.
In November, Cllr Thompson said residents deserved better than the “diabolical” planning service currently offered by the authority.
The councillor, who represents the North Richmondshire division, said members of the public were calling the department and nobody was picking up the phone.
He said the council was “not being fair to the public” with the level of service being provided.
The council has previously blamed a national shortage of planning officers for issues within the planning department.
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