Moray Council is handling planning applications at twice the speed of last year, new figures have shown.
A report has stated that the average time to process an application in 2012-13 was 16.8 weeks.
The average is now down to a little more than seven weeks.
The reduction follows three years of effort by council workers to decrease the number of cases that are more than a year old. Efforts were made to improve the response times for new applications.
Local developers are also now engaging with the council earlier in the planning process, which provides a better quality of application and helps to speed up the process.
Independent councillor Chris Tuke, chairman of the council’s planning and regulatory services committee, said: “The speed of processing planning applications has a direct impact on the ability of developers in Moray to deliver economic growth.”
Moray Council double speed of processing planning applications
