Bolton Council owes as much as £450,000 to the public in refunds it has unlawfully failed to pay out for many years. Last November the council leadership revealed that it had been wrongly keeping fees paid to its planning department that it should have been paying back since the law changed in 2012. Now an almost year long internal investigation has revealed that the “worst case scenario” is that £450,000 is owed for a decade long period.
Council leader Cllr Nick Peel said: “I think there were some major failings within our planning system and I think the revelation that came out in 2023 was potentially so damaging it was hard to see how the planning service could recover. “But the good news is that it is has.” Bolton Council has been failing to refund fees for around 10 years (Image: Newsquest) He added: “So out of what was quite a severe issue for the council there were some quite significant improvements out of that.
” The fees people paid can go from around £200 for a bid for a house extension to more than £20,000 depending on the size of the proposed project. But after the law changed in 2013, councils were required to refund people’s fees after 26 weeks unless a decision was made, or other agreements or exemptions were in place. For all this time Bolton Council had been “unlawfully” failing to pay people their refunds or make them aware that they were entitled to them.
A top-level meeting at town hall this week heard how for many years the council.