Planning decision times for major housing developments five weeks quicker than last year

Statistics on quarterly planning performance in Scotland have revealed that the average decision time for major housing developments was 33.8 weeks, quicker by more than two weeks compared to the previous quarter (36.4 weeks) and by just over five weeks than the quarter three figure for 2016/17 (39.1 weeks).

There were 31 decisions made on major housing developments during quarter three of 2017/18. In addition, there were 12 major housing applications that were subject to processing agreements with 8 (67%) of these meeting agreed timescales.

The overall average decision time for all local applications (9.1 weeks for 6,544 applications) has increased slightly since the previous quarter (9.0 weeks). In addition, there were 429 local developments decided that had processing agreements in place, with 321 (75%) of these meeting agreed timescales.

The average decision time for 63 major non-housing applications between October and December 2017 was 27.7 weeks, just over five weeks quicker than the previous quarter (33.0 weeks) and quicker by just over six weeks than during the same period in 2016 (33.9 weeks).

The average time has been influenced by a number of lengthier decision times including nine that each took longer than a year. 41 (65%) of the 63 major development applications were decided in a time that was quicker than the average.

In addition, there were 21 major applications that were subject to processing agreements with 16 (76%) of these meeting agreed timescales.

The overall rate of approvals for all types of application was 93.7% in the period October to December 2017, a slight decrease from the previous quarter (93.9%), and from quarter three in 2016/17 (94.2%).