Wiltshire Council invests an extra £1m into improving planning service

Wiltshire Council has announced an extra £1m investment into its planning teams to deliver a first-class planning service with faster decision-making and excellent customer service.

The planning service consists of many different areas, including teams that work on planning policies such as the Local Plan, officers that process planning applications, building control and planning enforcement teams, plus many more. The extra funding will be spent on more officers to build a stronger workforce that helps to shape communities and supports businesses throughout Wiltshire.

Cllr Nick Botterill, Cabinet Member for Development Management and Strategic Planning, said: While other councils around the country are cutting services and funding, we are investing an extra £1m into our planning service to deliver faster and better-quality outcomes for our residents and businesses.

Wiltshire is one of the largest Planning Authorities in the country, and we process more than 6,000 planning applications each year. Our teams work hard to provide a high standard of customer service across all the planning services we provide, from creating evidence-based policies that shape our communities, through to neighbourhood planning, enforcement and processing applications.

However, it is clear that we need to make changes to the way that we provide our planning services to ensure that we process applications more efficiently and deliver the best possible service for our customers - and this extra £1m investment will do just that.

We want Wiltshire Council to be recognised as one of the best planning services in the country, that delivers high quality, sustainable development and great levels of customer satisfaction in line with our Business Plan aim to have vibrant communities. This investment will help us to make these significant changes to the service to deliver our goals.