Senior Planning Consultant Chris Crew was recently interviewed by BBC News Guernsey on the States of Guernsey's Development & Planning Authority's 17% increase in planning and building control application fees.
The interview also covered the property industry's concerns on the timeliness of planning decisions in Guernsey - how 'slow and unwieldy' decisions can have a knock-on effect on the costs of developments - concluding that these two factors are putting people off obtaining the correct planning permissions.
Having stopped the regular publication of performance statistics in 2020, Chris welcomed the DPA's recent decision to publish 'regular operational updates, such as performance statistics covering timescales for determination of planning applications, alongside reports monitoring the effectiveness of Island development plan policies.'
Chris said: 'Effective scrutiny identifies how and where processes and decisions could be improved and how to prevent mistakes being made or repeated.
'Without effective monitoring and the regular, open and transparent publication of Planning Service performance statistics, it will become increasingly difficult for politicians, service managers, building and environment professionals, applicants, researchers, the media and communities to hold the planning system to account, to measure, make informed judgements on, and communicate its efficiency, effectiveness and value, and to benchmark its performance against other comparable jurisdictions.'
You can read more on this in these articles Planning services: Who watches the watchers? and Planning in the Channel Islands: Time for 'special measures'?
