MALVERN Hills District Council has had to pay back more than £13,000 for not determining a major planning application within the regulated 26 week period.
Bosses at the authority said they will review its procedures after it breached the timing regulations set by UK planning laws and were made to refund the application fee.
The applicant, who did not wish to be named, had plans to create a solar power system in a village near Worcester turned down by the district council earlier this month despite a final decision being made beyond the 26-week target date set by the council.
Its target date was set for October 21, but the plans were refused by the council’s planning committee at a meeting held on November 4.
Bosses at Boughton Butler, which represented the applicant, told The Observer at no point had the council written to them asking for a time extension during the time period.
Planning laws state that a refund cannot be made if an extension had been agreed between both parties, but Dan Stiff, director of the firm, said this was not the case.
“During the 26 week plus determination period of the application the council did not request any extension of time, did not highlight there was any material issue with the application yet did not efficiently (in any way) seek to determine in within the 13 week period,” he said.
“The main complaint is the lack of cohesive and compliant process at the council. This does not just relate to this single application but we are seeing a consistent lack of delivery for almost all applications submitted to MHDC currently.”
Duncan Rudge, development control manager at Malvern Hills District Council, would not reveal exactly why it took so long to respond but said the council would review its planning procedure to avoid a similar incident from happening again.
“There were some unavoidable delays in this case due to unforeseen circumstances,” he said.
“Despite that, we did everything possible to report the application to committee, with an officer recommendation for approval, at the earliest possible opportunity.
“It was disappointing therefore to receive the letter from the applicant’s agent only minutes after the committee decided to refuse the application.
“In all cases we work positively with applicants to bring their applications forward in a timely manner. In this case the applicant has chosen to legitimately take advantage of the Government’s regulations to obtain a refund.
“We will therefore be looking at our procedures for working with applicants to ensure this is not repeated.”
