East Yorkshire planning publicity ‘may cost too much’ (From York Press)

East Yorkshire planning publicity ‘may cost too much’

9:00am Monday 19th November 2012 in East Yorkshire news

COUNCILLORS in East Yorkshire will this week rule on whether they are spending too much money on publicity surrounding planning applications.

A report by officers at East Riding of Yorkshire Council, which will go before its planning committee on Thursday, said the authority had to follow certain statutory and Government guidelines when notifying the public of planning schemes, but some of the other information it chooses to publish is getting “poor response rates”.

They said 68,723 letters were sent out to residents living next to sites where planning schemes were proposed between July 2011 and June 2012, at a cost of almost £38,000, but only 2,471 people replied.

This was just 3.6 per cent, and the committee must decide whether there were “more efficient and effective ways” of publicising applications.