Provisional figures for 2007/08 from the UK Statistics Authority report for the Department of Communities and Local Government show Berwick comes bottom in one area and second bottom in the other two areas when the figures for the speed of planning decisions are broken down to local authority level.
Just nine per cent of 'major decisions' were decided by Berwick Borough Council within the government target time of 13 weeks, despite the council only having 11 such applications in total to deal with.
Blyth Valley Borough Council had an 84 per cent decision rate, despite having more than double the number of applications than Berwick.
Berwick deals slightly better with 'minor decisions,' with 36 per cent of the 135 taken made within the eight week target, although this still leaves them second bottom, only Blaby District Council, in the east Midlands, being worse, with 34 per cent.
Berwick again almost takes the wooden spoon when all other planning decisions are examined, with just 52 per cent being decided in eight weeks or less, one of only three local authorities out of 345 with a rate of less than 70 per cent.
Shona Alexander, head of regeneration services at the borough council, told the Advertiser: "We knew this was on the cards, but it is still a big disappointment.
"We have being trying to do all we can to improve, and there have been problems with high staff turnover and there is a huge workload for a small staff, especially with windfarm applications."
Earlier this year, the Audit Commission criticised the borough council's planning service in its annual audit.
It said: "The speed at which plans are determined is improving but overall the service is not reaching government targets.
"The service is struggling to deal with a legacy of more complex major applications and none of these are currently being processed within government target times."
It went on: "The council has had limited success in implementing the changes needed to improve the planning (development control) service. It has a good plan for improving the service.
"The procedural changes have largely been implemented and the constitutional changes needed have recently been agreed.
"However, staff turnover is high, vacancies exist and plans for recruitment have had limited success, the structure is inappropriate, and a significant number of the improvements to ICT have not been delivered. These significant challenges have the effect of minimising the impact of the changes which have been made.
"Without the capacity to implement the improved processes the service is unlikely to deliver improvement of the scale needed to meet government targets."
Mrs Alexander said, in light of the new figures: "We are working closely with the Audit Commission and Government Office North East on what we can do to improve, but things have gone backwards and it is really disappointing."
"One of the problems is that although we have a small number of applications, if one or two are late then that skews the figures more than say it would for Newcastle council.
"We have had four windfarm applications, in theory to determine in thirteen weeks, and that is simply not possible.
"Our bottom line is to give the customer the best possible service," she said.
"To come up with the best scheme, it sometimes means taking a little longer than the ideal, but here in Berwick we have a lot of other issues to consider.
"We have lots of listed buildings and something like 13 conservation areas and these all give added problems and sometimes that means that we are a bit slower than government targets.
"We now have to look at how we can improve under the new unitary authority."
She added: "Across the planning service nationally the standards are slipping, and that is why the government are looking at reorganising planning and having bigger decisions decided at a higher level.
"That may speed up the decision time, but people would not be happy as that would take decisions away from local councils.
"It is all a case of balancing it up."