Planning performance statistics: annual and quarterly reports, 2012-2016

13. Major Developments by Planning Authority, 2015/16

As in the previous section results are only given for post 3rd August applications. Results for all applications can be found in the detailed excel tables at: http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Planning

13.1 Major Developments - by development type, 2015/16

Chart 55: Major developments by planning authority and development type, 2015/16 ¹

1. The number in brackets gives the total number of major development decisions by planning authority (excluding processing agreements). See Section 2 for further details of processing agreements.

The chart shows information on the case mix for each planning authority, ordered by housing followed by other developments. Note that numbers of decisions made for major developments are very small at planning authority level. Glasgow made the most decisions (31) for major planning applications with 12 for housing, 14 for other major developments, 4 for business and industry and 1 for waste management developments. In addition Glasgow used processing agreements for a further two major developments. Edinburgh used processing agreements (18) for the majority of their major development decisions and when these are included Edinburgh made 31 decisions overall on major developments.

13.2 Major Developments - average decision times, 2015/16

The following charts shows the average decision times for major developments ordered by the number of decisions made for major developments in each planning authority. In total there were 267 decisions made on major developments in 2015/16 with an overall average decision time of 30.5 weeks. A further 83 major developments that were subject to a processing agreement are not included in these average decision times.

Chart 56: Major developments by planning authority, 2015/16: Number of decisions

Chart 57: Major developments by planning authority, 2015/16: Average decision time (weeks)

Numbers of decisions made for major developments are very small compared to those for local developments and the average decision times at local authority level are likely to be volatile. The case mix also has an influence on average decision times. The lengthy average time for major developments in Falkirk was due to one major development for a residential and mixed use phased development, including up to 1,500 residential units, community and enterprise facilities, transport and environmental infrastructure and employment space.

Cairngorms National Park, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park and Na h-Eileanan Siar did not make any decisions for major developments in 2015/16 and are therefore not included in the charts in this section.

The following table is an extract from Annual, 2015/16: Table 2 and allows comparison of the average decision times for major applications between years.

Table 8: Major Applications: Average Decision Time

Due to the small numbers of major applications, especially at local authority level, average times are more variable. However, Aberdeen City, Falkirk, Perth & Kinross and Shetland Islands have all improved their overall average decision time by over 40% compared to 2014/15.