The provisional Northern Ireland Planning Development Management Statistics July – September 2013 has been published.

The report reveals improvements in processing time performance across all of the main categories of planning application. Over the current quarter, the average processing times for Major, Intermediate and Minor categories of planning application reduced by four, two and one week(s) respectively compared to the equivalent quarter in 2012/13.

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In addition, the 2013/14 Programme for Government interim target to process 75% of Large Scale Investment Applications within six months was exceeded in the first half of the year with 93% of all such applications being processed within this timescale. However, despite the improved performance recorded for Major applications, the average processing time of 25 weeks recorded during this second quarter was still five weeks in excess of their 20 week target. Final performance against targets will be assessed at the end of the 2013/14 year.

These performance levels were achieved against a backdrop of further falls in planning applications with a 7% reduction recorded this quarter compared to the same period in 2012/13. This reduction is similar in magnitude to the previous year's quarter 2 reduction of 6% and may suggest some leveling out in the rate of decline that has been witnessed in recent years.

(CD/JP)