High planning enforcements in Herefordshire

Herefordshire has again made the top 10 English authorities by number of enforcement actions taken against residents and businesses, according to official figures.

Enforcement actions are typically used to force individuals or companies to rectify building work done without permission. Failure to do so is a criminal offence, though government guidance tells councils to use such actions proportionately, and that their use is discretionary.

With 50 such cases in 2020/21, Herefordshire ranked tenth, behind seven London boroughs, North Warwickshire and Bradford. The county ranked 41st by number of planning decisions made over the same period.

Herefordshire’s figure was also three times more than that of Birmingham, which has nearly six times Herefordshire’s population.

The county was placed eighth nationally in the previous year, 2019/20, with 58 enforcement actions.

Overall the number of enforcements dropped sharply last year, to below 3,000 nationally from nearly 4,000 the year before. Over one-third of these were in London, while 46 of the 314 local planning authorities listed, including Worcester, issued no planning enforcement notices at all.

The figures also show that Herefordshire approved 89.9 per cent of the 2,000-plus planning applications it received in 2020/21 – slightly above the national average of 88.3 per cent.

Herefordshire Council did not respond when asked why the figure for the county appeared so high two years running.