EXTENDING the membership of the Blaenau Gwent Planning committee has improved its performance according to senior councillors.

At a meeting of Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council’s Planning Committee on Wednesday, councillors were presented with a report detailing how the authority’s Planning Department performed between October and the end of December last year.

The report shows a mixed performance during the quarter with some measures improving and others worsening.

The data shows that council planners decided 89 per cent of applications inside the time scale – which is an eight-week period, or an extended time agreed with an applicant.

The Wales average was 85 per cent.

This sees Blaenau Gwent in joint 12th place in the league table for all of Wales’ 25 local planning authorities.

This is down on the previous quarter of July to the end of September 2023, when the figure was 97 per cent.

Blaenau Gwent had also dropped from third in the league table.

On the second measure, it took Blaenau Gwent planners 83 days to decide each application, which is less than the 115 days average across Wales.

This was significantly down from 105 days reported during the previous quarter.

This leaves Blaenau Gwent in joint fourth position of 25 and up from 15th league position in the previous quarter.

The last measure is how many planning applications decided by councillors at Planning Committee, went against the recommendation of planning officers at meetings.

For this period, the Blaenau Gwent Planning committee had not gone against any planning officer recommendations, while the average across Wales was four per cent.

The Planning committee had not gone against officer recommendations in the previous quarter either.

Development and estates manager Steve Smith said: “The performance figures themselves are satisfactory, there is room for improvement but the performance in this quarter has been negatively affected by the continuing secondment of a planning officer who is working on our new software.”

“The average number of days is 83 which is a little higher than we have been showing of late, but we hope to bring that down for the rest of this year.

He added that the department had cleared a backlog of older applications which should help the statistics for the rest of the year.

Planning committee chairwoman Cllr Lisa Winnett said: “Thank you for that.

“The team have been under extreme pressure for several months and I can’t see it easing up either at the moment.”

Historically Blaenau Gwent’s Planning committee has received criticism for the amount of decisions they took in the past which went against officer’s recommendations.

Cllr Wayne Hodgins said: “It shows the programme of training we have done over the last 24 months seems to be paying and we all have a better understanding which is good.

“We have had some bad press on the way we conducted ourselves and it’s just totally untrue.

“We know what we’re doing we read reports we analyse.

“This information will give the general public some reassurance extending it to ward by ward members and everyone is having an input.

He added that the committee had become “very non-political” as it should be.

Two years ago, a decision was taken to have one councillor from every one of Blaenau Gwent’s 14 wards become a member of the Planning committee.

Cllr Winnett explained that in the past membership of the Planning committee had been lopsided with some wards having several councillors on it and others none at all.

Cllr Winnett: “I think the planning committee has come a long long way.

“The changes we have made have enhanced it.”

The report was noted by the committee.