Dealing with windfarm applications is causing Powys council cost and staffing issues

The cost and workload of dealing with the glut of Development of National Significance (DNS) wind farm proposals are causing problems for Powys County Council, councillors have been told.

At a meeting of the council’s Economy, Residents and Communities Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday, October 14, councillors went through a performance report that looked at how services had been delivered against a number of targets.

These targets are contained in the Corporate and Strategic Equality Plan 2023-2027 update report for quarter one of 2026/2027, which covers April to the end of June.

Measure 358 showed that county planners decided only 79 per cent of planning applications within the time limit, against an internal target of 90 per cent.

Measure 359 showed that county planners investigated 74 per cent of enforcement cases within an 84-day period, while the target is 80 per cent.

Councillor Adrian Jones (Conservative – Berriew and Castle Caereinion) said: “The figures are dropping.

“We had a local impact assessment (Local Impact Report) sent to (Planning) committee the other day (Monday – October 12) and it’s a huge undertaking.

“Do they affect the work and to what degree?”

The LIR is the authority’s chance to feed into the consultation process on DNS applications, which are dealt with by Welsh Government planning inspectors at Planning and Environment Decisions Wales.

Cllr Jones also recalled that the Local Impact Report (LIR) was based on work provided to the council by consultants.

“Are the costs of those recovered or go to the applicant,” asked Cllr Jones.

Head of planning and regulatory services Gwilym Davies answered: “The LIRs do impact the resource we have, in particular when we find developers submitting information over and over again.

“We have to have officers from a variety of different departments reassess that information.

“In some cases, we have to go out to specialist consultees, such as landscape consultants or acoustic engineers, and we have to pay for that, and it could be a few thousand pounds each time to secure that advice.

“It is an issue and expense for us, and it takes officers away from planning applications.”

He explained that senior staff in the department usually deal with LIRs, and this takes “capacity away” during a time when staff absence is an issue.

“The resilience of the service is affected, and we’ve highlighted this to the Welsh Government,” said Mr Davies.

Mr Davies said that some of the costs could be covered under “planning performance agreements” with developers.

This would be under a pre-application process where a developer works with planning officers to identify concerns and receive advice from council planners before an application is formally submitted.

“But the take-up of that offer is not high, and it causes us concerns about the quality of applications,” said Mr Davies.

Council leader Councillor Jake Berriman (Liberal Democrat – Llandrindod North) was a planning chief before retiring.

Cllr Berriman said: “We encourage planning performance agreements, but developers don’t always choose to go down that route.”

Taking the Nant Mithil wind farm DNS proposal near Llandrindod Wells as an example, he told the committee that the planning application had been “back and forth” on a number of occasions, with PEDW (Planning and Environment Decisions Wales) asking developers for more information.

This causes delays and increases the cost of processing the application.

Cllr Berriman said: “I have highlighted in an opportunity I had with the (Welsh Government) local government minister Sian Gwenllian about the resource implications for us and for PEDW.

“If PEDW adopted a more robust approach as is the case with PINS (Planning Inspectorate) over in England we would not be in this position.”

He added that the cost of county planners and consultants attending a public inquiry on these types of applications was also deemed to be “financially damaging to us” when all the responses had already been lodged with PEDW in writing.

Recommendations and comments from the committee on the report will be provided to cabinet.