By Carmelo Garcia – Local Democracy Reporter
Gloucestershire housing developments face delays as a council has seen a huge spike in its backlog of planning applications after recovering from a cyber incident.
Tewkesbury Borough Council identified an issue within its IT systems on September 4 and they shut down all of their online systems.
Most systems were brought up safely and securely by September 24 after assurances from cyber security specialists that the council systems are safe and no data has been lost as a result of the incident.
However, as a result of the cyber incident the council’s planning department has seen a large increase in their backlog.
A report presented to council today said it is estimated the backlog will rise from 238 to around 390 as a result of the service’s downtime.
“This additional sharp increase will inevitably compound the existing pressures on officer workloads and in turn have an impact upon the customer experience, as well as posing financial risks through fee return under the planning guarantee and impacting the authority’s performance,” the report reads.
“The existing backlog is largely made up of cases that have been held up for planning reasons, such as awaiting amended plans/reports.
“The new backlog comprises almost entirely of a large volume of cases which would otherwise have been determined within their statutory determination period but will now expire before the authority can deal with them.”
The council is working to streamline the process and make changes to its scheme of delegation which will see fewer applications being referred to the planning committee.
They believe this would aid in improving the effectiveness, speed and certainty of the delegation decision making process.
These changes would release capacity which in turn would aid in delivering the aspirations of their continuous improvement programme by providing a high performing planning service, they believe.
Gloucester News Centre – http://gloucesternewscentre.co.uk
