90% planningdecisions local?
DERRY City Council Strategic Director Anthony Tohill says a major decentralisation of planning decisions to local authorities in 2014 could see upwards of 90 per cent of decisions made locally.
He told members of the Council’s Planning Committee on Tuesday (October 1) that during a fact-finding mission to Scotland he discovered City of Edinburgh Council had 58 elected members, 19 of whom sat on its planning committee.
He said the fifteen handle approximately 5,000 applications a year and 93 per cent are delegated to council officers.
Mr Tohill suggested the transfer of Planning Service functions to local councils under an ongoing shake-up could see Derry City Council’s 40 member successor authority handling a similar workload.