The current version of Table 152a shows a 24 month "assessment period" ending at the end of March 2014. Nine months from then takes us up to the end of December 2014 (which is the last quarter for which stats. return info. is available).
DCLG have then produced the "Quality of Decision" % measure by calculating a simple percentage from total major application decisions made in the assessment period and the total number of major decisions overturned at appeal (where the appeal decisions were received during the nine months from the end of the assessment period).
The assessment period for the table for the quality of decision table (152a) is therefore always going to be lagging nine months (3 quarters) behind the assessment period for the speed of decisions table (151a).
The DCLG publication that sets out the criteria for designation says "The average percentage figure for the assessment period as a whole will be used." No averaging however has taken place in the DCLG calculations.
The word "average" is also used the wording for the criteria for the speed of decisions measure but is not used in the DCLG calculations, in that case there was an easy way in which the quarter results could have been averaged but they have not been. That point has been the subject of an earlier post to this forum.
