Transforming The Planning Function: Hambleton's Story

Summary

The journey through Business Process Improvement has been of immense value to the Council. Not only has it taken us through a complete overhaul of our existing processes, leading to innovative changes, it has also brought new skills into the Council to be used in future reviews of services.

Implementation of all the improvements highlighted will produce savings of 13% in the cost of the service. It has been agreed that 10% will be cashable savings and the remainder reinvested to deliver a Development Management approach to the service.

Project Background

Hambleton were invited to join this project by CLG, following our interest in an earlier e-planning project. Also invited to form the second phase of the National Process Improvement Project (NPIP) were Leeds City Council and the East Riding of Yorkshire Council. A fourth partner was the London Borough of Lewisham who, having already been a part of the Phase 1 Pathfinder in Business Process Improvement, carried out a parallel exercise using existing in-house expertise.

This project sought to help identify where authorities could do more of the things that customers want, not by spending more, but by spending less on things that do not matter. It is a means of identifying if there is waste in existing systems and processes and then seeking to eliminate it.

Objectives

The aim of CLG was to expand the NPIP project into Development Control. This would achieve their objectives of:

• Service and process improvement

• Analysis and re-engineering of whole planning application process

• Internal knowledge gained of BPI process

• Capacity to roll-out across the organisation

Our objectives were somewhat different, though complementary:

• Enhance e-working

• Maintain top quartile performance

• Develop use of Document

• Management system

• Implement front office/back office split

• Identify means of reducing budgets

• Assist in change to Development

• Management approach

• Improved customer satisfaction

What Was Done

With the aid of funding from CLG, consultants, ValueAdding.com, were employed to lead the process. The company already had experience in the planning field which got us off to a good start. All three authorities used the same consultants which in itself gave benefits to the project as we progressed as it allowed benchmarking of all the activities within the planning application process to take place.

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