Vacancy rates in Scottish local authority planning departments have reached 38%, rising to 61% in two rural authorities, according to figures compiled from council establishment data.
The same authorities are handling application volumes between two and five times their 2019 levels.
Why the posts are not filled
The reasons are consistent and none of them are mysterious.
Local authority salaries are below the private consultancy rates available for the same qualification, and consultancies are recruiting hard because they are advising the applicants. Several rural posts have been advertised four times. In two cases the successful candidate withdrew after failing to find housing in the authority area, which is the subject of most of the applications they would have been determining.
“We advertised twice, appointed once, and lost them to a landlord. I am not being flippant. The housing crisis is now recruiting against the department that exists to fix it.”
A head of planning in the north
The appeals side
Appeals to the national reporter service now average 38 months from lodging to decision, against a target of six.
The backlog has produced a strategy that several agents now use openly: submit, expect refusal or non-determination, appeal, and rely on the framework and evidence base having shifted by the time it is heard.
Case 140/85, an appeal over eleven houses in Wester Ross lodged in 2023, was determined last month against a local plan that had been superseded twice since submission.
The system, under load
- Average vacancy rate: 38%; up to 61% in rural authorities
- Application volumes vs 2019: 2–5x
- Average appeal time: 38 months, against a 6-month target
- Rural posts readvertised three or more times: 14
- Appointments lost to a failure to find housing: at least 9 since 2024
The thing that would help most
Asked what single change would make the biggest difference, six of the seven heads of planning contacted gave the same answer, and it was not money for salaries.
It was housing for staff, of the kind councils built as a matter of course until the 1980s and almost none now hold.
