Transforming the Planning Function

ValueAdding.com supported and helped deliver the Transformational Planning Project, which followed on from the National Process Improvement Project (NPIP), with four councils being chosen as pilots to research and develop the employment of industry standard Business Process Improvement techniques in a local planning environment.

The four councils were the London Borough of Lewisham, Leeds City Council, East Riding of Yorkshire Council and Hambleton District Council and they examined how they process planning applications using process mapping and activity based costing techniques in order to develop a 'transformed' approach.

The pathfinder councils completed their projects against a background of change, both in some of the regulations surrounding the planning process, and in the global financial markets. The figures contained in this report are representative of a 'normal' year, and do not necessarily reflect the downturn in financial markets and housing applications which were seen towards the end of the pathfinder projects. This should not however detract from the lessons learnt and the potential savings which can be delivered.

The scope of the Transformational Planning Project was:

• To create and effectively disseminate a set of tools, based upon real experiences in local planning authorities, which promote more efficient and customer-focused processing of planning applications;
• To raise awareness of the necessity to transform local planning authorities;
• To provide a base from which further evidence-based transformational approaches can be created to extend the support available to local planning authorities.

The project was structured around three methodologies, which involved the councils working together in facilitated collaborative workshops to exchange ideas and discuss common issues. The councils also hosted their own learning days on key topics such as use of Uniform, scanning, workflow, web and systems. The three methodogies were:

• Process mapping
• Analysis of data
• Process costing using Rough-cut Activity Based Costing

Benefits: What the Pathfinders Achieved

The pathfinders found a number of benefits to their service from undertaking their business process improvement (BPI) projects:

• Each of the Transformational Planning pathfinders expects to deliver cashable savings through their project - up to 14%,
• Each of the pathfinders has identified areas of non-value adding activity which can be removed, with the time channelled into more value adding areas for customers and staff,
• Staff have become more customer-focused – they now give even greater consideration to how their activities affect customers, and vice versa,
• The pathfinders are utilising the tools and techniques gained from their projects in other areas in their authority – building capacity for positive change,
• Staff became highly engaged and enthusiastic in the projects, and their potential to improve both their jobs, and the service they provide to the community,
• The pathfinders found additional benefits from collaborating with each other on their projects – the Yorkshire pathfinders would go as far as to say that their projects were a single, shared journey, rather than three separate workstreams.

The project synthesis found "Overall, each of the pathfinders expects to increase their ability to fulfil their primary goal – delivering high quality, well designed and sustainable developments."