OXFORD City Council is making the wrong planning decision in more than half of appeals lodged by developers, according to the latest figures.

In the first quarter of this year, the city council saw six decisions overturned out of the 11 appeals lodged against it.

It means the authority has failed to hit its own performance target of winning 63 per cent of cases taken to a planning inspector.

But head of city development Michael Crofton-Briggs said the dip did not reflect the long term trend.

He said: “The numbers we are talking about are so small that it is difficult to draw particular conclusions from two or three months.

“Overall the council is on a par with the national baseline, we are having about 70 per cent of appeals dismissed (inspectors ruling in favour of the council).

“Every now and again there are a few months when the dismissal rate is a little bit lower.”

In 2005, the council’s planning department criticised councillors for overtuning its advice on planning applications, leading to 42 per cent of appeals being won by developers in a six-month period.

But in the first three months of this year developers were winning 55 per cent of the time.

Mr Crofton-Briggs said reasons for the high number of decisions against the council had been investigated by planning staff, including whether planning officers had made the decision or if councillors had overturned an officer’s recommendation.

The council lost six of those appeals, two were decisions made by committee and four were delegated decisions made by officers.

He said: “I don’t think there is any particular trend coming out at the moment.

“We’re just going through an unsuccessful patch.”

He said his staff had carried out training sessions with councillors, where appeal decisions, and the rulings of inspectors, were looked at.

The council’s “rolling annual performance” in terms of planning appeals showed the it had won 69 per cent, which meet the target.

Mr Crofton-Briggs said the high number of appeal defeats had not cost the council more in legal fees.

“The costs to us are the same whether the appeal is allowed or dismissed,” he said.

The 11 appeal cases between April and June were heard by written statements and each involved one planning officer spending half a day preparing a written statement.

A government planning inspector can award costs if he believes one party has acted irresponsibly, but Mr Crofton-Briggs said that had not happened in any of the cases in the first quarter.