Transforming The Planning Function

With the exception of Social Services, few council departments have been the subject of as much change in recent years as planning. The introduction of the planning portal and electronic methodologies such as 1-App, mean council planning departments now have available many of the tools they need to move from ‘Development Control’ to ‘Development Management’ in their local areas. And, even though the last few years have seen a marked increase in planning applications, most councils are now either meeting or exceeding government targets for the time taken to determine them.

However, despite this progress, planning departments continue to attract much attention and are under pressure to maintain the pace of change. From applicants frustrated by bureaucracy to community representatives unsure of the quality and direction of decision making, all stakeholders are looking for improvements in the service offered and an increase in the efficiency and transparency of the planning process.  

Phase 2 of the National Process Improvement Project focused solely on planning and aims to provide a blueprint for councils to resolve some of these issues through collaborative working and the analysis of current practices.

Over the summer of 2008, ValueAdding.com has been working with three Yorkshire councils: Leeds,  East Riding and  Hambleton to achieve the following transformation objectives and develop plans for process improvements that will deliver the longer term planning goals set out in their Local Development Frameworks:

• Make best use of electronic methodologies: 1-App

• Improve and increase the use of electronic document management

• Release resource for Development Management activities

• Improve performance against national indicators

• Increase customer satisfaction

The project was structured around three methodologies. These methodologies 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.

ValueAdding has recently worked with Capital Ambition (London Councils) to collect data from over a dozen London planning services in order to more properly understand how benchmarking can be used to help services improve at the same time as reducing their costs.

Our benchmarking report on this work shows how we are approaching the issue and what measures are being considered. The key findings of this report show that councils want to understand their planning performance in relation to a comprehensive series of measures, not just the traditional national indicators where the % of applications decided in a given time is declared. Indeed our report shows that this latter type of target can actually hinder planning authorities from improving performance. 

We are currently undertaking a survey on benchmarking for Planners - click here if you would like to take part.