People who submit Planning applications each year should see an increase in response times as early as spring, according to the Minister of the Environment speaking yesterday in the House of Assembly during a debate on the Budget.

Environment Minister laid out a detailed hiring schedule which should put Planning staff at full tilt in the next few months. Her plan included filling posts for the Director of Planning and the Senior Building Inspector by the end of May.

Shadow Minister said he welcomed the news, but also remarked sarcastically: "I wonder if it will become a reality before the next election."

The number of submitted applications last fiscal year, 10,326, and the length of time it takes to process an application, 15.3 weeks, are at their highest level in at least four years.

It takes more than three and a half months to get an application through which is more than a week and a half longer than what is typical.

Minister Butterfield said the staffing additions will prompt "a significant improvement in the processing time of planning applications".

Mr. Simons criticised the Government for not beefing up staff numbers sooner, particularly the role of Planning Director.

He said: "It's amazing that the department is expected to function without a captain to guide the department along.

"We have people working hard but getting nowhere. That's how the community sees the Department of Planning."

But the Minister explained that Bermuda was suffering the same fate as countries all over the world struggling to find qualified Planning professionals.

She said: "It's a world wide problem. Just recently in our quest to get staff, from the UK down to the Caribbean, they had the same identical problems. And if the Shadow Minister is interested, there is a survey out from London on planners. You would have thought they were talking about Bermuda because the exact same thing that is happening in London is happening in Bermuda. One of the key reasons is the buoyancy which is happening throughout the world.

"What we should be doing is encouraging our young people to go into this field."

The discussion was part of the the ongoing Budget debate in the House of Assembly.

When the fiscal year ends in a few weeks, the Department of Planning's revenue number is expected to come in $360,000 under budget. The Minister said that is largely because the initial 2006/2007 Budget estimate was "overstated".

Nonetheless, the department will get an eight percent budgetary increase in the new fiscal year, most of the increase is attributed to an annual raise in salaries.

However according to Mr. Simons, the eight percent number is misleading because his analysis showed a 100 percent increase for the department between 2002 ($2.174 million) and 2007 ($4.223 million).

He said: "To have a 100 percent expenditure increase in five years is almost unheard of.

"If you were a CEO of a company you would be fired, asked to resign if expenditure went up 100 percent in five years and revenue did not go up accordingly."

Mr. Simons not only criticised the Ministry for overspending, but for under-spending as well ? in the area of planning enforcement. The Budget details two employees specifically assigned to enforcement and search.

Mr. Simons said: "It is my contention that that is woefully deficient.

"There's a lot of nonsense in this community going on in the Planning area. We have contractors out there putting up false licence plates. We have people refusing to even submit applications. We need more people out there in the enforcement arena addressing these issues."

To further explain his point, Mr. Simons said he checked with the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to find out if the Department of Planning had presented any enforcement cases for prosecution.

He told the House: "Not one file had been brought before the courts in the past three years.

"To me this clearly demonstrates the Government's lack of commitment to bringing people who violate the Planning laws to court.

"It's a hay day for some of these contractors and they don't care about Bermuda's sustainable development future."

Minister Butterfield later corrected the record and told Mr. Simons there had been at least one case brought before the DPP. It involved Devonshire Marsh.

Ms Butterfield said: "I as Minister have no control over what happens in the DPP office. The information is sent, but we must not think that it's the only thing we do in enforcement. Enforcement are signs that are placed all around the country. Enforcement are correction notices as well as stop order notices."

The Environment Minister told the House of Assembly that the new Budget included money for a consultant who will help update the Bermuda Development Plan.

Most people agree that The 1992 Development Plan is in dire need of revision in light of the Island's rampant growth.

The Development Plan is supposed to be updated every five years. It's been 15 years since the last one.