CHRISTCHURCH council has called in outside help to deal with major delays with planning applications.

The council's planning department has been criticised for long waiting times in registering planning schemes, after they installed a new IT system.

That, and staffing issues, have seen applicants waiting for up to 10 weeks just for their proposals to be officially logged.

Now, in order to deal with the issue, the council have paid an outside body to shift the backlog.

The decision to hire the firm was taken under delegated powers.

The council, when asked how much the company were being paid, said it would depend on the stage each application was at before it went to the organisation.

It is estimated to be between £5,000 and £10,000.

One applicant, Bob Kirkham and his wife Sheila, put in an application to build a conservatory on their house in Burton in May.

Despite their cheque for fees being cashed on May 9, the application only appeared on the council's website on Monday, July 12.

Mr Kirkham, who has written to the council several times over the issue, said: "If they were running a private business, they wouldn't survive.

"They have failed to communicate properly and frankly the delay is unacceptable.

"We wanted to be building over the summer, but we can't until we have that piece of paper.

"If it runs the full consultation time, it will be autumn before we can start."

Simon Trueick, planning policy manager at Christchurch and East Dorset councils, said: “We would like to apologise to Mr and Mrs Kirkham and to anyone else affected by the recent delay in registering planning applications.

"Their application has now been registered and is in the statutory consultation period.

"We recently installed a new planning software system.

"That, coupled with training for staff on the new system, the large number of planning applications being submitted and some exceptional staffing difficulties, led to delays in registering those applications.

"In order to address the problem we decided to get temporary help from an outside planning registration company, TerraQuest, to clear the backlog of applications.

"It is difficult to say how long this company will be used as it depends on the complexity of each application but we estimate the backlog will be cleared in two to three weeks."

"We are now up to date on current applications."