Agenda item

To receive and consider report 4/06 of the Deputy Director (Planning and Community Strategy) attached.

The Committee received and considered report 04/06 of the Deputy Director (Planning and Community Strategy) which set out the implications of the Council being included on the list of Planning Standards Authorities for processing Major and Minor planning applications.  Historical and current performance for processing all planning applications were considered and an Improvement Plan was proposed in relation to Major and Minor applications.

The Committee’s attention was drawn to the performance over the last three years and it was noted that performance had fluctuated, mainly due to staffing difficulties.  It was reported that there were currently some staffing problems and therefore a slight dip in performance for this quarter was likely. 

Members were advised that the Scrutiny Committee at its meeting held on 13 April 2006 had recommended agreement of the Improvement Plan and Trajectory subject to an additional bullet point in paragraph 4 of the Improvement Plan specifying that all consultees were to be urged to respond within the statutory deadlines.  Also Officers were requested to put in place measures to enable the monitoring of the planning process in respect of major applications to enable the reasons for delay to be readily identifiable.

One Member commented that when a member of staff left the employment of the Council there could be a delay in getting a replacement member of staff in place due to the Council’s Managed Vacancy Policy.  He suggested that delays could be caused because of the need to consider providing suitable alternative employment to staff elsewhere in the Authority where their posts were being deleted.   He suggested that the Executive should be asked to look at this in detail to determine whether these factors had any impact on performance.

The Officers advised that the Managed Vacancies arrangement had now been halted and instead managers had been allocated 95% of last year’s staffing budget and were required to manage their staffing levels within that as far as possible.  It was recommended that some of the planning delivery grant should be set aside as contingency to cover periods of staff shortages.

One Member sought clarification of the targets and deadlines set out in the report.  It was explained that the Plan was a working document and that some of the targets had yet to be achieved.  To this end it was agreed that the deadline for these should be reviewed and included in the final document to be considered by the Executive

One Member commended the Officers for the new way of working which seemed to be accountable to some extent for an improvement in performance.  She paid tribute to the former Chair of the Committee, Councillor Sylvia Patterson, who had been keen to promote new working arrangements and she thanked the Officers for their work in this area.

In response to a number of questions raised the Officers made the following points: -

·                     This Authority had been included in the list of Planning Standard Authorities because of its poor performance in the year ending June 2005. Notably, performance in determining major applications had fluctuated and had been below average.  Performance on minor applications had also been below average. The Government had a cut off point for each category and this Authority had fallen below that point.  It was explained that staff turnover at the time was the main cause for the lower performance levels.

·                     The Improvement Plan had been drawn up having regard to the outcome of a Best Value Review in 2001, advice from the Planning Advisory Service and check lists of other top performing authorities.

·                     One issue was to ensure that Section 106 obligations were in place to enable planning permission to be granted.  How Section 106 funds were spent had been considered by the Scrutiny Committee.

·                     Past performance was due also to a philosophy of negotiating with relevant parties rather than following Government targets.  It was also noted that reports sometimes had to be presented to Committee within agreed timescales when some issues had yet to be resolved. 

·                     Drafting of Section 106 agreements could be outsourced if it was not possible to do this legal work in house, although this would be costly and would not benefit from the knowledge and expertise of the Council’s legal Officers.

One Member referred to the “culture” of the Planning Officers to ensure sound planning decisions.  He commented that targets were supposed to serve performance not hinder it although he recognised that some action was needed to improve performance.  He specifically referred to Action 11 in the Improvement Plan emphasising that he agreed that Members should be encouraged to use their power to refer applications to Committee sparingly.

By 14 votes to nil it was

RESOLVED

(a)        that the Executive be recommended to agree the proposed Improvement Plan and Trajectory, amended to include the following: -

(1)         the comments of the Scrutiny Committee, namely the inclusion of an additional bullet point in Action 4 of the Improvement Plan specifying that all consultees are to be urged to respond within the statutory deadlines;

(2)         revised timetables for outstanding actions..

(b)        that the Executive be asked to endorse that the Officers be requested to put in place measures to enable the monitoring of Major applications to ensure the reasons for delay to be readily identifiable.

(c)        that the Executive be asked to consider whether the Council’s internal procedures in terms of managing vacancies and recruitment have any adverse impact on performance in determining Major and Minor planning applications.