MID Devon District Council has been given almost double the anticipated figure this year to help with future housing and planning.

The provisional figure it has been awarded by the Government was £444,288.

The housing and planning grant supports council planning departments according to targets on issues such as speed of processing applications and making land available for development.

The announcement was made to the council's planning committee at the beginning of its meeting on Wednesday, December 3.

Jonathan Guscott, head of planning and regeneration told members: "This provisional figure is an excellent result. It is the third highest award behind Exeter and Plymouth. But it is open to challenge from other authorities, and it may go up or down."

The amount of money awarded to local authorities in Devon ranged from nearly £800,000 for Plymouth to just £9,950 for East Devon.

The provisional figure is particularly welcome as the council had been expecting a sum closer to £250,000.

Planning committee chairman Cllr Paul Williams congratulated planning officers for their hard work which had helped the authority to meet its targets.

He said the committee itself had shown it was willing to go the extra mile and build in extra meetings into its schedule to ensure that applications were dealt with.

He said: "We can hold our heads up with the best of them. We were the first council in the country that has included the Community Infrastructure Levy in its Local Development Plan document, so we don't just follow what other authorities do."

The planning department has been meeting targets for the speed with which it handles cases.

Cllr Williams said: "Ordinarily, planning officers would be expected to deal with 150 applications each per year, our officers are dealing with nearly 200 applications each, so we get good value from them."

Cllr Williams said he felt the planning team at Phoenix House would be greatly assisted if the council could employ dedicated compliance and section 106 officers, while some authorities were even employing zero carbon officers, as councils worked towards meeting sustainability targets.

He conceded the way in which the council's windfall was due to be allocated would be determined by the executive and full council rather than his committee.