COUNCIL officers are making more and more timely decisions on new planning applications and enforcement cases in Carmarthenshire, figures have shown.

In the first six months of 2022-23 the planning department made decisions on 649 applications within an eight-week target time, with 79 decisions taking longer than eight weeks.

This was an improvement on the previous year in terms of the percentage of applications dealt with promptly, according to a council report, but separate figures about the determination of major applications showed little progress.

Planning manager Ian Llewelyn told the council’s planning committee that major applications tended to be more complicated and that a backlog of historic major applications were still being worked through.

Mr Llewelyn said the report overall was further evidence of a commitment to improving performance after criticisms of the planning department by Audit Wales in 2021.

The council’s enforcement team, meanwhile, closed a higher proportion of cases within an 84-day target in the first six months of 2022-23 than almost all of 2021-22, but it still didn’t hit an 80% target in any quarter.

Enforcement cases are often complex, and it took an average of 124 days to investigate each one between July and September this year – the most recent period figures were available for. But this was considerably less time than in previous quarters.

The report also said that planning applicants hadn’t lodged any appeals of decisions made by the committee against the advice of officers since the start of 2021. It noted, though, that planning costs totalling £44,275 had been awarded against the council in such cases since March 2019.

Cllr Russell Sparks wanted to know why the costs statistic had been included, given that the rest of the report was concerned with 2021 onwards.

“I would worry that potentially it’s trying to put pressure on (committee) members in terms of decision-making,” he said.

Mr Llewelyn said it was a “legacy” figure and not there to put pressure on members, although he said it was a “useful reminder”.

He added: “But it won’t be appearing on subsequent reports.”