Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council (ABC) are currently awaiting 80 Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) planning consultation responses… making it the most impacted council in Northern Ireland.
In November 2025, the Natural Environment Division issued a Planning Consultation Update to notify customers of a growing backlog in consultation responses.
The statement read: “DAERA wish to alert all customers that we are currently experiencing a very heavy workload resulting in delays to planning consultation responses.
“The Department has implemented a number of actions to improve our customer service and to enable us to address our current backlog.”
They added that providing “indicative response times for inquirers” was slowing down their ability to respond to consultations having to divert resources to handling these requests.
“We appreciate the concerns of those waiting for responses so we will be focussing all resources on making responses ASAP rather than using resource to indicate when responses are anticipated,” they said. “The Department has consequentially taken the decision that it will no longer be providing responses to any requests for updates until further notice.”
Further to this, Sinn Féin MLA Cathal Boylan asked the Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs to detail the number of planning consultee responses that are outstanding for the NI Environment Agency, broken down by application type and local council.
In response, the Minister Andrew Muir explained that as of January 28, 2026, there were a total of 547 planning consultations (506 statutory and 41 non-statutory) outstanding, including 132 still within the agreed response timeframe, but that over three quarters of those applications (415) were within the backlog across Northern Ireland.
Mr Muir included a chart of council areas in order of impact which shows ABC Council area at the top… with 61 outstanding consultations and a total of 80 awaiting response.
The ABC Council is followed by Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council with 60 outstanding, Fermanagh and Omagh District Council with 59, Mid Ulster District Council with 49 and Newry, Mourne and Down District Council with 49. All other council areas have less than 30.
The application type most impacted in the backlog is for single dwelling housing. A total of 103 applications were awaiting consultation responses across Northern Ireland at the time of the Minister’s reply.
It remains unclear how many of these housing applications relate to ABC Council area.
