Planning staff hit out at claims of 'unofficial strike'

West Berkshire Council staff say they are committed to doing the best they can under difficult circumstances

STAFF at West Berkshire Council have hit out at claims by a member of the public that the planning department appeared to be on an “unofficial strike.”

Last week, Newburytoday.co.uk's sister newspaper, the Newbury Weekly News, reported how members of the public had become increasingly frustrated at the recent delays to planning applications, which had seen some applications remain undecided or in some cases, not even validated for weeks or months on end.

One woman, who asked not to be named, described the delays as horrendous and accused the council of “playing politics with people's lives.”

She said: “The word on the street is that the planning officers are all feeling quite mutinous because of all the cuts.

“It is like they are on an unofficial strike because of the cuts.”

The district council last week moved to explain that the planning department had been working with a shortage of staff, owing to three posts being frozen to save money, coupled with one member of staff being on maternity leave and another being off work due to long-term sickness.

In addition, council spokesman Phil Spray said the department was dealing with a record number of planning applications, with 3,065 applications received in the year ending March 31, 2011, compared with pre-recession levels of 2,335 in the year ending March 31, 2009.

And this week, the chairman of West Berkshire Council's Unison trade union branch, Dave Pearson, spoke out to reject claims of an unofficial strike.

“We feel that is a slur on the staff that work here,” he said. “We are working flat out to deal with the applications, despite the cuts, and there is certainly no one on a go slow.”

Mr Pearson added that the staff within the planning department were committed to doing the best they could while working under the difficult circumstances.

Meanwhile, in a letter to the NWN, the executive member for planning and housing, Alan Law (Con, Basildon) this week thanked the planning staff for their dedication, flexibility and extra effort he said they were putting in to help address the problem.

Mr Law said the vacant posts had been filled, but he said new staff took several weeks to be trained, adding that the council had also initiated a temporary prioritisation process to all applications, instead of the usual ‘first come, first dealt with' system.

He said priority would be given to applications with an economic or community benefit, such as for schools, social care homes, village halls, offices and retail and other “job creating” applications, while applications for residential extensions or single houses would have a lower priority until the accumulated backlog was eliminated.

He added that anyone who felt they had valid justification for receiving a higher priority should contact the planning department for an objective review of their case.