Derry Team Champions Planning Change

For well over a year the Derry Planning team, with their partners in Derry City Council have piloted an innovative scheme to speed up and streamline the planning process. This was a first for Derry and a first for Northern Ireland. The scheme allowed decisions on non-contentious planning applications for the Derry area to be issued without formally bringing them to the Council's Planning Committee with a recommendation. The Council are consulted instead when the application is received.

Ian Crowe, Chamber of Commerce President, today praised all those involved in bringing forward this scheme saying, "The Planning Service in Northern Ireland has been open to much criticism over the last number of years, but here we have seen the team in Derry bucking the trend and finding a way to overcome some of the issues that slow down the process. In the past, even the smallest and most straightforward of applications had to be submitted to the Council's Planning Committee for Approval. This added weeks and sometimes months of delay and caused an additional administrative burden which had a knock on effect for the Planning staff in preparing other applications. Our local Planning office, led by the Divisional Manager Mary McIntyre, proposed a new format which meant that all non-contentious applications could bypass this additional layer of bureaucracy and have a decision issued directly from the planning office."

The new arrangements were devised by the team in the local planning office with the support and co-operation of the party leaders of Derry City Council and the City Solicitor.

The scheme has been in operation now for over a year and is working so well it is being rolled out across Northern Ireland. Previously this type of planning application took around 90 days to process. Since the introduction of the scheme the average processing time has been reduced to 28 days, with many decisions issuing in less than 20 days.

Divisional Planning Manager, Mary MacIntyre said "I am very proud that this significant improvement in customer service has been achieved in the local office and I am particularly grateful to Derry City Council for their co-operation in this venture to deliver much improved services to applicants"

Janice Tracey, the Chamber CEO said of the scheme, "This has really benefited many of our small businesses over the last 12 months - not just in terms of the higher level of business planning applications getting quicker approvals but also in servicing the small independent builders and the wide range of construction related business services that depend on a speedy planning process. As we wade our way through this recession, innovative actions like this all count."