Portsmouth City Council arguments over planning policy 'have only worsened planning application delays'

At a meeting of the council's governance committee on Thursday, councillors raised concerns about how Cllr Hunt had reached the decision to increase the threshold of public representations required for an application to go to its planning committee.

But they raised no formal objection to the proposal which is set to be finally rubber-stamped next month.

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‘I appreciate that some decisions have to be made quickly but in this instance taking a little bit longer would have been a bit more prudent,’ Councillor Daniel Wemyss said. ‘Increasing it to six would help officers but it wouldn't help residents. My inclination is to keep it at three.’

Delays in bringing in the new policy were brought about after Cllr Hunt's decision was challenged through a call-in by Conservative spokesman for planning Ryan Brent.

He said the required changes to the council's consultation should not have been made without consultation of other councillors.

Earlier this month Cllr Hunt agreed to refer the decision to the governance committee ahead of his next meeting on November 9.

But he said the process had only worsened the backlog in the council's planning system, backing the decision he made in July.

'This is now four months of delay to something which will help speed up people's planning applications - something councillors have been asking for for a long time,’ he said. ‘We are doing things as quickly as we can with the aim of encouraging economic development in the city.’

Cllr Hunt had previously considered increasing the frequency of committee meetings as an alternative but this was ruled out as being unaffordable due to the increase in time required of legal and planning officers.

He said increasing the number of objections required for an application to automatically go to the committee from three to six would ‘halve’ the waiting list which stands at more than 100 schemes.

In April the city council held a two-week shutdown in order to try to clear its planning application backlog. It previously drafted in a private firm to catch up with the number of applications, but this had little impact.