Recruitment woes within Arun District Council's planning enforcement department

The council’s Planning Committee discussed plans to deal with planning breaches going forward on Friday (9 December) amid staff vacancies.

Development management team leader, Juan Baeza, said staffing within the enforcement team was ‘seriously down’ with one staff member and two consultants where there would usually be five full-time members of staff.

There was a time when the council was having to ‘turn people away’ when they reported potential planning breaches, according to Mr Baeza.

A new strategy will be adopted which will see the council investigating planning breaches that do ‘significant harm’ whilst other ‘minor’ breaches may not be investigated.

This strategy was initially deferred so consultation could take place with town and parish councils.

Mr Baeza said the strategy would ‘allow the local community to have confidence [that] potential breaches they report will be investigated in a fit and proper way’.

Councils have powers to stop developments they believe are doing harm or those which go against conditions. Arun has indeed issued several stop notices in recent times but staffing remains a major barrier.

June Hamilton (Ind., Pagham) asked if the council had considered recruiting retired police or army personnel.

“How can we expect one person to do what is normally the job of five people,” she asked.

Chair Terence Chapman (Con, East Preston) said retired police officers had ‘historically been very fruitful ground’ when it came to recruitment but changes to pension rules put a stop to this. He agreed that approaching veterans was a good idea to plug vacancies.

Mr Baeza said the council will now ‘widen the pool’, perhaps considering people without planning qualifications, because there had been ‘little or no response’ so far.

There will be ‘no substantive changes’ to the enforcement strategy despite dissatisfaction from other councils.

Middleton-on-Sea Parish Council fears it has been ‘rushed through’ meanwhile Bersted Parish Council said that the strategy would ‘have no backbone’ if staff vacancies are not filled.

Felpham Parish Council said investigating only some incidents ‘gives a potential green light to planning breaches and environmental damage’.

Planning officers said the strategy had not been rushed and consultants would deal with serious cases.