This report on the public technology website shows that West Lancashire has been getting worse in their processing of planning applications over the past year. We’re one of 27 authorities in the country where the performance is “significantly worse”.

I raised it tonight at Overview and Scrutiny, asking that we should have a report on what council officers were doing to try and resolve the problem.

Sadly, the Tories didn’t want anything to do with it and instead blamed the government, certain councillors and anyone else they could rather than accept that by these measures we’re not doing that well.

These are bread and butter services that the council should be performing well at – particularly given the self-congratulatory mode that the council operates in. They like to say that they’re doing well, and they like to give the impression that they’re doing something about performance management; but when presented with an incontrovertiable measure where they don’t face up and try to resolve it, they look for someone or something to blame and leave it at that.