Bristol’s economy is being badly affected because the planning department at City Hall has 'effectively ground to halt', businesses and residents have been warned.
Businesses, charities and residents are experiencing at least four months of backlogs to even be assigned a planning officer at Bristol City Council, and the Mayor of Bristol has said the issues are the unseen consequences of more than a decade of Government cuts to local authority finances.
One well-known Bristol charity had warned it will start losing £5,000 a month on a new shop it was unable to open because a planning application for a new shopfront was still in the in-tray at City Hall - and it was only when its boss appealed directly to the Mayor to intervene was the planning permission awarded the very same day.
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Across the city, big developers, small businesses and ordinary residents are experiencing at least four months of delays in seeing their planning applications even begin the process of being decided by council officers and councillors.
The Mayor of Bristol has blamed 12 years of Whitehall cuts to local government budgets, and also a long-standing suppression of the fees people have to pay to submit an application - which in theory is supposed to pay for the running of the entire planning department.
A number of high profile applications have already experienced lengthy delays, and some developers are giving up waiting and taking their application to the Government planning inspector to appeal on the grounds of ‘non-determination’ - the council had failed to make a decision in the legal time limit.
Last month, the council’s largest emergency accommodation provider, Connolly & Callaghan said after six months, it had given up waiting to have a planning officer assigned to start processing its application to turn a former nursing home in Bedminster into housing for up to 20 people. So C&C said it was instead appealing to the Government to step in and decide instead.
In the week before Christmas, C&C said the delays were impacting them financially, having spent more than a million pounds on a property two years ago, the firm is still waiting to convert it. "At the time of writing, the case has not been allocated to a case officer, and no consultation has taken place," a statement from C&C lodging the appeal said.
"The appellant is aware of applications submitted to Bristol City Council more than five months ago, which have yet to be allocated to a case officer. Whilst the appellant appreciates the issues with regards to staffing and workload levels, a commercial decision has to be made in the interests of expediency of decision-making.," they added.
Homes England has also appealed against the council for non-determination of an application to build 260 new homes at Brislington Meadows, although the Government’s housing agency didn’t wait that long for a decision, and appealed knowing that the council would have refused the application anyway.
In South Bristol, a firm of builders wanting to restore, refurbish and reopen a local pub, the Cross Hands, waited six months before finally being awarded planning permission, a delay which then badly affected their ability to get the project started.
And Ashton Gate’s Sporting Quarter plans were at City Hall for 18 months before it was finally given approval - setting the project back a couple of years, and impacting on the overall costs.
One of South Bristol’s most controversial plans, for 157 new homes to be built at Novers Lane on the Western Slopes between Bedminster and Knowle West is still yet to be decided, 17 months after plans were first submitted.
The boss of one local building firm, which specialises in extensions and loft conversions, said the delays were affecting their business. "It just seems the planning department has effectively ground to a halt," said the man, who declined to be named. "We'll be having clients draw up their plans and submit them, hire us and then it'll be six, nine, months to a year before they finally get approval - often on something really simple like an extension or conversion that used to take a month or six weeks. It's affecting everyone in all the trades. Everything is slowing down because of it."
What happened with St Peter’s Hospice?
At the last full council meeting before Christmas, John Broomhead, the head of retail at the St Peter’s Hospice charity, asked Mayor Marvin Rees why his straightforward planning application to install a shopfront of a new St Peter’s Hospice shop on Whiteladies Road had not been granted planning permission.
Mr Broomhead applied on August 18, but almost four months later, on December 13, the charity’s application had not even been assigned to a planning officer. Mr Broomhead said the charity faced the prospect of having to start paying £5,000 a month in rent for the new store from the first week of January without being able to open it and get money coming in, because they didn’t have planning permission for the new shopfront.
Mr Broomhead submitted a question to the full council meeting on December 13, and local ward councillor Carla Denyer (Green, Cotham) also asked a question on the charity’s behalf.
“It seems that the Council’s Development Control department is currently running a backlog of at least 3-4 months between an application being submitted and it being allocated to an officer,” she said. “These delays have been impacting residents and councillors for months, but I fear that the delays are also affecting the local economy.
“This is just one of what must be dozens if not hundreds of similar situations across the city. The impact will be felt greatest by small businesses and charities, who can least afford the extra costs. The delays add to a perfect storm for charities in particular,” she added.
Mr Broomhead told the meeting that, after almost four months of hearing nothing back, he received an email at 1.59pm - a minute before the council meeting started - from the council’s planning department telling him that he his application had been assigned an officer. Mr Broomhead said this was ‘an interesting coincidence, maybe?’
Mayor Marvin Rees said it was no coincidence - he’d received notice of Mr Broomhead’s question and problem, and Cllr Denyer's question, and ‘made it happen’. Council records later showed that, by the end of that day, the planning officer had used delegated authority to grant permission to the new shopfront.
What are the reasons for the backlog?
Anyone who applies for planning permission pays fees, and major applications from big developers require fairly large fees for the planning officers to deal with it. For decades, the planning process and administration was self-funding, and didn’t cost taxpayers anything, with the costs being met from the fees charged.
However, Mayor Marvin Rees said that the fees the councils are allowed to charge by law have not increased enough, and have not kept pace with the costs involved. Swingeing cuts to the amount of money Westminster grants to local authorities mean councils don’t have the money to subsidise the planning system.
“Twelve years of substandard financing of local government, which is something we’re all facing across the country right now, is often talked about in terms of a loss of frontline services, parks, libraries, public toilets,” said Mr Rees.
“The hidden casualty of the financial challenges we face are often the backroom office roles. No one protests for planners, lawyers, accountants and yet that backroom capacity of officers to keep the cogs of the city lubricated has been severely undermined. Our backroom teams are stretched beyond all that’s reasonable, to try to respond to the public in many situations,” he told Mr Broomhead.
Mr Rees agreed with Cllr Denyer that the issues were impacting the city’s economy. “The Council’s Development Management service is experiencing a significant backlog of planning applications. I also recognise that every application that is delayed will cause issues for the individual or business involved,” he said.
“No detailed economic assessment of the overall impact of the delays has been carried out but we know that it frustrates growth and development. Development Management is a self-funded service, so as not to be a burden on Council Tax payers. Regrettably the system of nationally-set fees for such applications have not been reviewed for a number of years and it is flawed in that application fees do not reflect the cost of processing minor applications in particular.
“As a result, the service is not able to draw on the resource that it needs to deliver the level of service that it would like to. The service is also having to carry a number of vacancies in order to contribute to this year’s budget savings,” he added.
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