SCOTTISH Borders Council is performing better that the Scottish national average when it comes to dealing with planning applications.

In its annual report to the Scottish Government, the council's Planning Service has reported further improvements in respect of decision making.

Councillor Ron Smith, SBC’s Executive Member for Planning and Environment, told the Peeblesshire News: "Every year we continue to see improvements in the Planning Service and I commend the staff for their ongoing efforts to reduce the time it takes for applicants to get a decision. 

"This is largely down to the groundwork that officers put in with developers and applicants prior to the submission of plans.

"It has taken a great deal of work to get to this position and further improvements are planned, as well as a review of the service as a whole to see where delivery can continue to be enhanced," he added.

The average time to decide planning applications fell in 2015/16, this follows a reduction in 2014/15.

This includes a significant fall in the average time to decide major applications (eg windfarms and major housing developments), falling from 73.3 weeks in 13/14 to 30.9 weeks in 2014/15 and now to 27.6 weeks.

And local non-householder developments and householder developments saw reductions in average decision-making timescales. 

Non-householder developments reduced by over five weeks to 17.4 weeks and householder developments fell from 7.7 weeks to 6.7 weeks in 2015/16.