Eastleigh Council is on report for failing to hit government targets for the speed of deciding planning applications.

Only 67 per cent of all planning applications were determined in eight weeks in 2003/04 compared with the government target of 80 per cent. For major applications - where the government target is 60 per cent - only 33 per cent were dealt with in the approved time span.

As a result, the government has declared Eastleigh a "standards authority" and appointed consultants to report on what action the borough council needs to take to raise performance.

Tomorrow Eastleigh's resources scrutiny panel will be told that the consultants had concluded that the key obstacles to achieving government targets were:

The low level of delegation and Eastleigh's committee structure

Lack of resources to recruit and retain experienced staff together with an increase in the number of applications, planning enforcement matters and appeals received.

In a report, council head of development control Colin Peters said there could be no disguising the fact that 2003/4 was not one of the better years for development control performance. He added: "The cause of this decline was directly related to staffing, as during the summer/autumn period of 2003 the unit had to manage with the loss of half of its senior planning staff when two officers left to join the private sector and one officer was on maternity leave.

"Recruitment problems effectively prevented adequate staffing from being obtained."

Eastleigh is now required to produce an improvement plan and predict future performance, which will be monitored by the Government Office for the South East which will also seek explanations for under-performance.

Tomorrow, councillors on the scrutiny panel will be asked for their comments before an officers' report goes to the council's powerful executive committee on September 9, recommending a package of measures to improve Eastleigh's planningapplication processes and performance.