Issue - meetings

Members were asked to consider and note the contents of the quarterly Planning Compliance caseloads and performance report, for Quarter 4, 2025/26

The Stockton on Tees Local Enforcement Plan (LEP) was approved at planning committee in September 2024 and became ‘live’ on the 1st November 2024 and this report provided the latest quarterly report. As part of the LEP, service targets were introduced which are as follows;

• 70% of enforcement cases closed where no breach identified within 20 working days.

• 60% of enforcement requests received an initial response, for example no breach of control identified or further investigation to be undertaken, within 10 working days.

• 60% of planning enforcement cases, where the case actions were determined within the established priority timescales.

Performance against the internal performance standards continued to remain strong and overall 97% of all cases received in the last quarter had case actions determined within the identified priority period.

As detailed within table 1 of the report, over the last quarter the number of cases received had again dropped slightly, with the number of cases determined and processing time remaining consistent with the previous quarter and year overall.

Planning Services also continued to discuss a case of non-compliance with colleagues in legal services over appropriate next steps and potential prosecution.

At the time of writing, the total number of unresolved compliance cases currently equated to 191, with 38 cases being historic cases received before the introduction of the Local Enforcement Plan.

The next quarterly update would be quarter 1 of 2026/27 (April - June), which was anticipated being reported in July/August 2026.

RESOLVED that the report be noted.