Bolton Council owes up to £450k in unpaid planning refunds

Last November the council leadership revealed that it had been wrongly keeping fees paid to its planning department that it should have been paying back since the law changed in 2012.

Now an almost year long internal investigation has revealed that the “worst case scenario” is that £450,000 is owed for a decade long period.

Council leader Cllr Nick Peel said: “I think there were some major failings within our planning system and I think the revelation that came out in 2023 was potentially so damaging it was hard to see how the planning service could recover.

“But the good news is that it is has.”

Bolton Council has been failing to refund fees for around 10 years (Image: Newsquest)

He added: “So out of what was quite a severe issue for the council there were some quite significant improvements out of that.”

The fees people paid can go from around £200 for a bid for a house extension to more than £20,000 depending on the size of the proposed project.

But after the law changed in 2013, councils were required to refund people’s fees after 26 weeks unless a decision was made, or other agreements or exemptions were in place.

For all this time Bolton Council had been “unlawfully” failing to pay people their refunds or make them aware that they were entitled to them.

A top-level meeting at town hall this week heard how for many years the council’s planning department had lacked a “clear process”, according to director of place Jon Dyson.

Mr Dyson said that there had been “concerns about the consistency of understanding” in the planning department, which had been “less open to challenge” during this time.”

He said there had been “missed opportunities to correct matters.”

Council chief executive Sue Johnson said that the money to be paid would be paid out of the authority's “one-off reserves”, which she said meant that front-line services would not be hit.

She also said that the final figure may yet be “considerably less” than the £450,000 worst case scenario.

Council officials say they are unsure about the exact number of people who are entitled to refunds.

But a total of 1,045 application files were reviewed over a two-month period.

Since the unlawful failures were first made public last November, 23 applicants across Bolton have applied for refunds of which three turned out to be valid.

But the council leadership said that they were in the process of contacting other previous applicants to find those who are eligible for refunds.

They say that all ten actions recommended by an audit report into the planning department’s process have been brought in bar “physically delivering the refunds”, which is in process.

The council has also said that it has streamlined its planning process to reduce the number of outstanding cases from a peak of 1,000 during the pandemic to an “all time low” of around 300.

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Audit committee chair Cllr David Grant said that he was glad there would be an opportunity to discuss the report’s findings in a committee meeting soon.

He said: “I think it’s important that members get the opportunity to voice their opinions.”

He added: “Despite it being quite damning initially, he’s allowed all members to have their say.”

The report will be considered by Bolton Council’s audit committee on Wednesday, October 10.