Council Chair hosts a reception for the Council’s Planning Service

Recently the Chair of Fermanagh and Omagh District Council, Councillor John McClaughry, hosted a reception for the Council’s Planning Service in recognition of winning Northern Ireland Planning Authority of the Year 2024 at the Royal Town Planning Institute Awards.

The following is the speech made by the Chair at the reception:

Good afternoon Councillors, ladies and gentleman

As Chair of Fermanagh and Omagh District Council, I am delighted to be hosting this reception to recognise our Planning Service Staff and Staff who contributed towards the achievement of winning the Planning Authority of the Year at the Royal Town Planning Institute Northern Ireland Planning Excellence Awards.

The awards for planning excellence recognise and celebrate the positive contribution planning professionals make to communities.

Our Planning Service has approximately 40 staff and each of you contribute to the delivery of key functions including local plan making, development management and planning enforcement.

The work you undertake is very important because you shape the local area and help to create places where people want to live, work and invest in.  The various services you provide deliver a wide range of public interest outcomes which aim to meet the needs of local people by creating sustainable communities within the context of a healthy, well planned natural and built environment.

March 2023 was a notable date for the Council with the adoption of the Local Development Plan: Plan Strategy.  This provides a plan-led framework for decision making in relation to housing, retail, employment and infrastructure.  Work is currently ongoing to develop the Local Policies Plan which will be another important document for the Council and the District.

The Planning Service also saw a significant change within the last year with the introduction of the Planning Portal.  This transformed your service delivery as you have moved from a paper based system to an online system.  This brought significant changes for all staff as well as agents and applicants, however, you seamlessly achieved the transition.

In recent years you have also introduced a number of changes to help make the service as effective and efficient as possible for staff and customers.  This included the introduction of the Validation Checklist and the Workshops with Agents which have proved very beneficial and successful.

The volume of work undertaken by everyone in the Planning Service is significant and, often in quite a challenging environment, however, you deliver the service to a very high and professional standard.  As a result, you meet all three of the Statutory Planning Statistics as well your local Planning Improvement Programme which includes a number of action to ensure the service is effective and efficient.

I am delighted that all your work to ensure the delivery of the best service possible was recognised in the recent Planning Excellence Awards as you won the coveted title of Planning Authority of the Year.

This award recognises the high standard of service provided, the range of projects you undertake, the development and application of imaginative approaches and techniques to achieve high quality planning solutions, how satisfied customers are and the commitment to staff development and business improvement.  You demonstrated the achievement of all the criteria to a very high standard to deservedly win the title.

On behalf of the Council, I would like to commend each and every member of Staff for the part you play in the Service Delivery and to win this award.  It is testament to your hard work, commitment, professionalism and willingness to continually deliver a very high standard to all customers.  I would like to wish the Team every success for the National Finals which are taking place in London at the end of November.  I understand there are 7 Councils in total competing for the National award and you can all be proud to be named amongst the best Planning Authorities from across the UK and I am honoured to be representing the Council at the Awards Ceremony.

Thank you.