Meeting documents

1 THE ISSUE

1.1 In July this year, the Minister of Housing and Planning wrote to the Leader of the Council (see Appendix 1), expressing the view that progress towards meeting the specific development control standards in terms of speed of dealing with applications, is insufficient and doubted whether the Authority will achieve national targets by March 2007.

1.2 In response to the above, the Council is required to produce an Improvement Plan to show how these targets are to be met. The plan, including the trajectory required to meet the targets has to be endorsed by the Chief Executive and shared with G.O.S.W.

1.3 This Report explains the background in more detail and puts forward the proposed Improvement Plan designed to meet the targets in the requisite timescales.

2 RECOMMENDATION

2.1 to approve the enclosed Improvement Plan;

2.2 to request the Chief Executive to endorse the Plan as required by the Minister;

2.3 to note the recommendations of the P.T.E.S. O. & S. Panel, and draw their attention to the specific 'Action' in the Improvement Plan and other factors which addresses the issues they have raised.

3

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

3.1 The detailed cost/resources requirements are indicated within the Improvement Plan against each of the 'Actions'. This includes a mixture of costs for staff/management time and costs for new I.T. support systems and consultants. The funding sources for this are also detailed in the Plan, and the total cost of implementing the Enabling and Key Action of £230,500 (this includes the savings in Key Action 5) is all from existing identified budgets.

3.2 The Council earlier this year identified £250k for the Planning Service to cover the costs of dealing with the major project work both in the context of Development Control and Planning Policy work relating to the Local Plan. This funding is not associated with the core service work referred to in 3.1 above.

3.3 If the performance of the Local Planning Authority does improve, there is the likelihood of funding to be obtained from the Planning Delivery Grant. It is difficult to assess what this might be, but the Grant is in place until the year 2008 and is "awarded" annually.

4 BACKGROUND AND PROPOSED ACTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT

4.1 The letter from the Minister and the accompanying consultant's report is reproduced in full in Appendices 3 and 4. The documents are largely self-explanatory but it is important to give specific focus to the Conclusions on pages 9 and 10 of the consultant's report, which highlights obstacles and the improvements needed.

4.2 The Improvement Plan (see Appendix 2) seeks to address these in detail and puts forward both enabling and key actions to contribute towards reaching the targets by March 2007. There is commentary against each action with regards to:

4.3 The targets the Government require the Council to meet by March 2007 are:

Major applications - 60% in 13 weeks

Minor applications - 65% in 8 weeks

Other applications - 80% in 8 weeks

The Minister's letter makes reference to the requirements of this Council to provide quarterly reports to the ODPM. The first quarterly report is for July-September

2004. The Improvement Plan is therefore based on the performance achieved from 1^st July 2003 to 30^th June 2004. The performance during this period for each of the categories was:

Major applications - 25%

Minor applications - 58%

Other applications - 70%

This results in a required improvement of 35% for major, 7% for minor and 10% for other applications.

At present the anticipated number of applications received this financial year (based on the first 6 months) for each of the above 3 categories is:

Major applications - 40

Minor applications - 650

Other applications - 2,200

The definition of these categories is shown in Appendix 3.

4.4 Included in the Plan is a table which identifies all the key actions and their impact on performance over time. It is important to emphasis that an assessment of the future impact on performance is not a precise science, but it is considered the figures put forward are relatively robust. The most volatile of them is probably an assessment of the impact on major applications. This is because there are only a relatively small number received each year. This could, for example, mean that Action 1 could have a bigger impact than 16% on the major performance.

4.5 Attached to the Plan will be trajectories to monitor the Council's progress each quarter. It is important in this context that the speed of improvement is realistic and achievable. For example, there is a need to clear an existing backlog and this could in the short term have a negative impact on performance. The trajectories do show that the targets are achievable by March 2007.

4.6 The majority of the Key Actions can be brought about by management decisions and changes, and resources have already been identified. However, any change to the Committee System as suggested by the Consultants will require a Member decision and the earliest this is likely to take place is in Spring 2005. An assessment of the current pilot committee in South Bath, will be carried out over the next few months. This is the catalyst for the consideration of future committee arrangements and the consultants' comments could be considered at that time.

4.7 The other Key Action which requires Members' involvement and support relates to changes to the process of dealing with application (Key Action 1) which puts the onus on applicants to improve the quality of submission, and to respond quickly to requests to amend schemes. Failure to do so would result in a refusal. This approach can only operate successfully if the Members give officers backing in taking this approach.

4.8 In July the P.T.E. & S. O. & S. Panel had a Scrutiny meeting with the Head of Planning Services, to look at the Best Value Inspection report and the letter from the Minister. A report with recommendations to the Executive Member for Sustainability and the Environment is a background paper. There are a number of recommendations, and the following is a response to the issues raised:

4.9 Reference has been made above to the Planning Delivery Grant. This was introduced two years ago by the Government, in recognition of the fact that following the assessment of a consultant's report, it was concluded that many planning authorities across the country had been historically underfunded and this had a direct correlation with poor performance. The Grant was originally designed to reward "improved performers" and in the first year of the award 2002/03 the Council received £133,000. This reflected the significant improvement achieved at that time. In the year 2003/04 the improvement did not continue and the Council received only £26,000. This was in the context of more money being awarded nationally than the previous year. Some neighbouring authorities, for example, received over £400,000 even though their actual performance was comparable to our own. These significant sums of money will continue to be awarded until 2008, although other factors are being brought in, relating to E-Government and progress on the Local Plan. This "carrot" is countered by the "stick" of potential intervention if the targets are not achieved.

4.10The Planning Delivery Grant funding received to date has been invested in new I.T. support systems (see 3.1 above and Key Action 4).

5 LINKS TO CORPORATE OBJECTIVES, TARGETS AND PRIORITIES

5.1 The changes and actions are underpinned by a requirement for focused management and leadership to fundamentally change and streamline the way the Service operates. The proposal will help achieve the corporate objective of delivering quality and accessible services, together with the target of improving performance and customer satisfaction year on year. There will be a focus on outcomes and the actions will be achieved within and by the redirection of existing budgets.