Agenda item

The report identifies the adverse variance in planning-related fees for the financial year 2022/23 and outlines measures to address reduced forecast planning income and mitigation options.

The Committee received a report identifying the adverse variance in planning-related fees for the financial year 2022/23 and outlining measures to address reduced forecast planning income and mitigation options.

The following matters were considered:

(1)          Budgeted Income Projection for 23/24. A Member of the Committee asked what the Budgeted Income Projection is for Development Management Service for 2023-2024. The Chief Accountant confirmed the figure is £660,000 for 2023 to 2024 as of the 1^st of April 2023.

(2)          Variance of Income. A Member of the Committee asked how such a Variance of Income was produced between 2022/23 and 2023/24.The Interim Head of Place Development explained that the Council cannot predict how many planning applications will be received nor generate more for themselves to deal with, they are entirely reliant on the market and people submitting applications to the Council. The Chief Accountant explains that due to Development Management having fixed costs, it must also have fixed budgets. The Council does budget to increase the charges year on year by a set percentage, which is set by the Council, this is currently set at 6% for the 2023/24 financial year. The planning application income budget, currently set at £456,000, has stayed the same since the 2018/19 financial year. That was the year the government increased charges for planning applications, so it was set in line with those changes. The fees and charges for planning applications are set by central government and therefore, we do no increase that budget year on year. The 2019/20 financial year, the budget was exceeded by £65,000 and the year before that it was exceeded by roughly the same amount so traditionally there wasn’t this budgetary issue we are currently seeing.Planning Application numbers haven’t recovered since COVID, in terms of budget, if we wanted to reduce income budget then we need to fund that somehow and we need to create more income somewhere else or reduce costs, so when there is a fixed cost base, there needs to be a fixed budget so that explains why things have gotten out of kilter. For the income budget to be cut, there would need to be cuts made elsewhere to enable this. The Chair confirms that there will be more coming to the committee on Budget Targets over the coming meetings.

(3)          Mitigation and shortfall. A Member of the Committeeraised that all mitigation strategies are long-term and asked whether short-term mitigations should be introducedif changes to the framework from central government are still a long way off. The Interim Head of Place Development informs the committee that central government hopes to introduce changes by summer of 2022. The Chair confirms that any changes will be brought back to this committee.

Following consideration, the Committee;

Resolved (5 for, 1 abstained, and the Chair not voting) to:

(1)      Agree that the reasons for the reduction in planning related fees is for reasons outside of the Council’s control.[VP1] 

Unanimously resolved to:

(2)      Note the reduction in planning-related fees and the measures taken to address this, noting the limited opportunities for mitigation measures for income that is market led.[VP2] 

(3)      Agree that future budget setting will take into account the outcome of government’s technical fee consultation and officer knowledge of development in the pipeline.