Environment Minister Geoffrey Boot came under fire last week for his lack of knowledge on planning cases.

Mr Boot outlined a new enforcement policy aimed at reacting to planning breaches more quickly, but he was criticised for a lack of detail on actual cases.

Lawrie Hooper (LibVannin, Ramsey), responding to the part of the policy that stipulates that all complaints would be acknowledged within three days, pointed out that in previous figures given, there were more cases open that letters of acknowledgement sent.

He asked Mr Boot to confirm every case had received a letter of acknowledgement, but Mr Boot (pictured) said he could not as he was not at the ’coalface’.

Mr Hooper, who has asked a series of questions about planning enforcement, was unimpressed.

’So far, in the last month, the minister has managed to confirm that his department has no idea how long planning enforcement cases are outstanding, no idea how long it takes them to respond to enforcement complaints, no idea of the time taken to acknowledge enforcement complaints, no idea whether the policy in operation is actually operating,’ he said.

’Does he have a clue at all what is going on within planning enforcement in his department, and, if he does not, how on earth is he monitoring the effectiveness of his new policy?’

Mr Boot defended his position and said it was not as ’simple’ as it appeared.

’In the past we have been under-resourced,’ he admitted. The enforcement section now had three people in it, compared with an equivalent of 1.5 previously.

Planning committee chairman Tim Baker came to Mr Boot’s defence, suggesting the minister had inherited the problem.

The new enforcement policy was introduced ’in reaction to some of the historic lack of focus on enforcement’.

Earlier Mr Boot had set out the new timescales for site visits following a complaint. High priority cases would see a same-day visit whenever possible.

’Medium’ cases would see visits within 15 working days, ’low’ within 30 and ’very low’ within 60.