Flintshire Council: Just three officers tackling nearly 500 planning disputes
A team of three planning enforcement officers in Flintshire is being stretched to breaking point with 467 active cases under investigation.
The situation – caused by cuts to service funding – is so bad that one councillor says elected members and residents should withdraw support for 2026 Senedd candidates who do not pledge to fight for a better financial settlement for Flintshire.
The authority’s Development Management Report, presented to the Environment and Economy Overview and Scrutiny Committee, highlighted how Flintshire has performed against a number of key indicators set by Welsh Government in 2024/25.
One of the biggest areas of concern was enforcement, the team that investigates planning disputes and breaches and resolves them.
Flintshire fell well below the national benchmark investigating just 58% of cases within 12 weeks. Welsh Government expects planning enforcement teams to investigate no less than 70% of cases within that time.
But the committee was quick to defend the enforcement team after Development Service Manager Matthew Parry-Davies revealed just how much pressure the small team was under.
“The enforcement figures for each quarter of 2024//25 and the figures for the first quarter of 2025/26 have remained consistent,” he said.
“That indicates that the team has reached its full capacity for dealing with complaints. We have three enforcement officers – one has a caseload of 168 enforcement cases at the moment, another has 157 the third has 142.
“We’ve also had a number of high profile and controversial enforcement investigations that have been quite resource-intensive which has meant officers have had to focus on those and other investigations have unfortunately had to take a back-seat.
“There is a perception we don’t do enough enforcement – I would counter that it is a very difficult part of the service. They do a very good job under very difficult circumstances.”
Mr Parry-Davies said he had bid for funding for an additional enforcement officer, but added that the constant stream of cases requiring investigation did not stop.
Councillor Sean Bibby said the problem had been caused by the planning department bearing the brunt of finance cuts as the council looked to protect other statutory services like social care.
“The reality is our workforce is trying to manage very large caseloads and there’s not that many of them there to do it,” he said.
“Streetscene and planning have borne the brunt of council savings. Those savings have consequences and we do not have the capacity to serve our communities as we would want to do. There isn’t enough resource and capacity to run these departments in the way we’d like them to run.”
Councillor David Healey said the problem lay with the poor budget settlement Flintshire received from Welsh Government and called upon members and residents to hold the region’s Senedd members and candidates to account.
“This committee sympathises with the enforcement officers,” he said. “The heavy caseload has been quite alarming.
“We know where the responsibility lies for the predicament we are facing in this and other portfolios. Education, council tax, the problem lies in the low funding we get from Welsh Government.
“Welsh Government has abdicated its responsibility by handing the funding formula for local authorities to the Welsh Local Government Association.
“There are Senedd elections coming up and we should say to candidates – unless you are prepared to support a change in the way the formula is worked out by taking it away from the WLGA to be determined by another body then we’re not prepared to support you or vote for you.
“The residents of Flintshire and us as a local authority are suffering immensely. the formula is not changing. It stays with the WLGA with the big boys at the top kicking those at the bottom – us – in the teeth.
“Those who come knocking on our doors in the Senedd elections need to wise-up. We need to say ‘we’re not going to support you unless you recognise that is the big problem that affects our residents’.”
The report was sent to full council with a recommendation from Cllr David Coggins Cogan that ‘the committee recognises the immense caseload facing the enforcement team and is grateful for their continued hard work and professionalism’.
By Alec Doyle – Local Democracy Reporter
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