What could be the reasons for planning decision delay?

[NoComparison]

My neighbours (A) submitted plans for a huge extention that would have impacted on other neighbour's (B) house and garden a lot. (B) wrote a very good, well researched letter listing their concerns and the council agreed with almost all their points and declined the application.

The (A) have since submitted 2 more, separate applications. One for a 2 storey extension to the side of the house and another to the rear. Even together they are considerably smaller than the original one, but still not idea from (B)'s pov.

The one at the rear is already built now but the council still have (both) the planning as pending, more than 2 months after the "due date" for a decision. What could be going on?

At a guess they were submitted over hte summer period when lots of planning officers were on holiday.

I suspect that's part of it yes, but the decision was already overdue before the holidays started. Other applications on the web-site appear to have gone through as normal.

Could it just be that the planning application website has not be updated properly?

My planning application on the website is shown as approved with our original set of plans (two storey) although we were made to change the plans to single storey 48 hours before the planning application hearing because they told us they would reject the two storey application but pass the single storey application.

Much as I would have loved to build in line with the plans shown on the website, I'm not sure I would have got away with it!

I don't think so Soozle, (A) is showing signs of stress at having built without permission (which they thought would be straight forward for the amended plans)

Ha, ha, in my very humble opinion neighbours (A) sound like idiots!

Sorry if that sounds horrible, it's not meant to - there's no way I would build an extension, though, if I didn't have planning permission in the bag.

In that case could the council have got wind of A's building work and the delay be related to prevarication about enforcement action?

Probably planning dept incompetence. When we applied for pp for our extension, we didn't even get an initial contact from them until a week AFTER their supposed deadline for decision-making, and only when we got in touch with them. It took 6 months overall to get our permissions, and that was for a straightforward application with no neighbour objections. Our planning department was a TOTAL shambles, shockingly, jaw-droppingly useless. They are a perfect illustration of everything Thatcher said was wrong with public sector organisations, and I say that as a die-hard left-winger .

I'm sure they aren't the only ones in the country either. Sorry!

I suspect tricot is correct. Decision is on hold pending enforcement action. There might be an extant Enforcement Notice. Neighbours would not be consulted on this, only on an appeal against it.

You can phone them and ask you know... they're not all incompetent (although most are stretched almost to breaking with cuts) and ours would tell you.