Modernising the planning system - service users' views

Audit Scotland has published the findings of its review of the new Scottish planning system , including findings from the Ipsos research on the views of recent users of the planning system, including householder applicants, agents, developers, and businesses. The main aim of the review was to assess whether recent reforms of the planning system, implemented in 2009, are making it more economic, efficient and effective. Overall the review found that the Scottish Government, key agencies and planning authorities have made good progress in modernising the system and are now working together better, but more progress is needed to realise the full potential of modernisation. The review calls for reform of the way performance in processing planning applications is monitored and reported. Time taken to process applications – historically seen as the primary indicator of performance – is only one indicator of performance and a more comprehensive performance measurement framework is needed. The main findings were:

• The funding model for processing planning applications is becoming unsustainable, leading to greater dependence on council budgets – while the number of planning applications has fallen by 29 per cent in the past six years, expenditure on processing planning applications has risen by 17 per cent in real terms between 2004/05 and 2009/10
• While the number of applications has fallen, few councils are performing well against timescales for processing planning applications – in the period immediately after modernisation, performance in deciding major applications declined, with only 30 per cent of application decided within three months. However, performance in processing local application is better: over the past six years, the proportion of local applications decided within two months has remained fairly constant.
• While the majority of users said they were satisfied with the planning application process, they were not generally satisfied with the time taken to process applications or respond to queries

The full report, Modernising the planning system, and the supplementary report, written by Ipsos, Service users’ views, can be found on the Audit Scotland website.