Residential Developments

Section S278 Agreements relating to residential developments during each of the past 5 financial years.
1. Please could you confirm the average time taken from technical submission to the issue of a technical approval?
2. Please could you confirm what is the average time from technical approval to the completion of a Section 278 legal agreement?

Section 38 Road Adoptions relating to residential developments during each of the past 5 financial years.
1. Please could you confirm what is the average time taken:
a. from technical submission to technical approval to;
b. completion of a Section 38 legal agreement to;
c. commencement of the maintenance period to;
d. the date of formal adoption to;
e. notification that any bond can be cancelled?

Devon County Council do not hold this information in a centralised format. Therefore, to obtain this information would require the close review of every individual agreement or road adoption from the last five years, the calculation of the time taken in every single agreement or adoption from the last five years (including the different questions asked in question 2) and then the calculation of an average.

To do this in the hundreds of agreements and adoptions which have taken place would take a significant amount of time. To allow for, say 30 minutes per file, and a total of 300 files, this would take at least 150 hours.

This is in excess of the appropriate time limit of 18 hours and disclosure of this information is therefore exempt pursuant to s. 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.