SUSTAINED serious illness and injury to staff has been blamed for another slump in the performance of Worcester City Council’s planning department.

Less than half (44.4 per cent) of planning applications received were processed between July and September, down from 61.2 per cent on the previous three-month period.

The internal target for the year was to reach 75 per cent, but that is not going to happen and bosses are now calling for more realistic goals to be set in the future.

Nine of the council’s 18 professional planners were absent with serious illness or injury over the last 15 months resulting in a loss of about 320 working days between them.

However, John Wrightson, head of urban environment, said the worst should be over now that staffing levels are on the up again.

At a performance management and budget scrutiny committee meeting, Mr Wrightson said: “You can imagine how disruptive this has been and it has put a lot of pressure on the people that remained. Until just before Christmas we hadn’t seen a falling off in demand with the number of planning applications coming through because of the recession. It has tailed off since then.”

The meeting was told how there are different timetables for different planning applications depending on whether they are major or minor. Both categories dropped from 67.9 per cent to 62.9 per cent, and 61.8 per cent and 49.2 per cent, respectively, from April to June and July to September.

Mr Wrightson said on top of the “glut of absences”, the department also had trouble filling a senior position due to a lack of suitable candidates. An antiquated computer system, and the ongoing development of the South Worcestershire Joint Core Strategy have also had an impact.

Councillor Marc Bayliss asked Mr Wrightson what strategy he employed to manage the situation.

Mr Wrightson said private healthcare for one senior manager suffering long-term absence was discounted on grounds of fairness to other employees as well as cost. Human resources are now looking into critical insurance cover for key employees.

Attempts to “borrow” staff from neighbouring authorities were also made but they could not spare the resources for a variety of reasons.

Mr Wrightson said he was, however, able to get in a couple of part-time and casual staff, as well as hiring a former chief planning officer at Leominster District Council.

Mr Wrightson said that now the majority of staff are back at work the department’s performance would improve in time.

But he warned that next quarter’s performance might also be down because 40 per cent of the cases are already ‘timed out’ due to the backlog.

Your Worcester News was the only member of the media to attend this meeting.