Retrospective applications - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

Hi Richard, if you go onto our website http://planningonline.bristol.gov.uk/online-applications/search.do?action=simple and using the advanced search, put ‘retrospective’ into ‘Description Keyword, set the date range and ‘Search’ you will get a list of the cases. 

Doing this for 2013/14, I found 32 cases.  Mostly small scale stuff, and most were granted.

In terms of the costs, when we did the PAS benchmarkng in 2011, our informed estimate was that such applications took around 20% more contact time than applications submitted in the usual way.

Hope this helps.

Hi Richard, the PS1/2 cases registered in 2013/14 was 3136.  Even with my limited grasp of statistics, it looks like a pretty small %. If you added in all the other types of applications/notices eg trees etc, it would get even smaller.

Do we under record? Possibly as it it relies on making sure that the word 'retrospective' appears in the Description of Development to enable the search to work.  That said, I would be reasonaly confident that its in the right area.  It would be good to get other takes on this, to see if we are normal or not.

I have looked back over the previous 2 years at all applicaitons that have the words 'retospective' and / or' retention of' in their description. As has already been said not all retropective applicaitons will be identified in this way but from the figures I have found I think it is a reasonable estimate. There was also some possible double counting in the way I have searched.

In summary therefore: I estimate we have had between 43 and 53  retrospective applications in 2012/13 and 32 to 44 in 2013/14. This is from a total application pool of  1614 applications in 2012/13 and 1841 in 2013/14. A very low percentage of 3% / 2%.

Retropspective applicaitons aren't something that figure highly in the overall application mix.

The main hassle and cost arising from retrospective applications comes from the enforcement team spending time encouraging applicants to submit them in the first instance and 'holding their hand' through the process of putting together an application that contains sufficient information and plans that it can be validated.

We have a very active enforcement team and only encourage applications when they have a reasonable chance of approval, hence only 5 of the 64 received were refused (8%). Overall about 6% of the applications last year were 'retrospective' (possibly higher than others due to our enforcement activity) and they do tend to take more time to process than similar applications due to the amount of public involvement, similar to Brian, we ‘benchmarked’ this at 20%. Around percentage (8%), end up at our Planning Control Committee (similar to all applications) and the Councilors always want to 'punish' the applicant by refusing it! I take the same stance as my predecessor, and tell the PCC members that the applicant is like the 'sinner who has repented' and as such we should not!! Hope this helps.