Agenda item

John Smith, Interim Executive Director, Growth and Regeneration, introduced the item to Members and provided some background and context to the main challenges and pressures with regards to the Planning Service.  These were said to be exacerbated by budget pressures and the recruitment freeze in late 2022.  

The Director then introduced Alex Hearn, Interim Director: Economy of Place and Simone Wilding Head of Planning Services who were already said to be making a positive difference. However, although things were showing signs of improvement this was still a fragile recovery.

The Interim Director: Economy of Place said the national context needed to be acknowledged and that many local authorities had been struggling for at least a decade.  Also, nationally there were not enough trained  professional planners available to recruit and the Council had struggled to compete in the labour market. The team consisted of hard-working officers that want to do a good job and the situation was being taken very seriously at both officer and Director level.  

The Chief Planner then presented the published slides to the Members.  Some of the key points were as follows;

• Detailed information about the key causes of delays such as resourcing and productivity.
• Actions taken since May 23 (when the Head of Planning Services started in post), to rebuild capacity in the team and shortening the time taken to make decisions.
• Further information about recruitment and retention issues and long-term solutions to help resolve those issues.
• Officers were said to be spending valuable time responding to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and complaints.  The plan was to reduce the number of those so that productivity could increase.

• There was a risk that the Council could find itself being put in special measures unless it could clearly demonstrate that has a clear and achievable plan for improvement. 
• Improvements were being made and the current backlog with regards to applications and decisions was continuing to reduce.
• Short and long-term plans to increase the capacity of the team, ensure sustainability of resources and enable speedy, pragmatic decision making.
• Central Government had brough forward the fee increases to 6^th December. This would increase the income but would also bring higher expectations of what should be delivered. It was confirmed the increases would be 35% for major applications and 25% for non-majors.

The following points were discussed and questions asked:

·        Members asked about the aspiration by June 2024 to double productivity and increasing capacity.  Was this a real possibility and would it require more people to do the work? 

o   It was said to be a mixture of both.  Although the doubling of productivity was aspirational it was already showing to be substantially better than it previously had been a short while ago which was encouraging. But whilst there would be an increase in fees there had also been a slight tailing off of applications, and so balancing the financial side of things to ensure the service received the right budget was quite tricky.

The wider economic conditions did have an impact on the number of applications received but bringing forward the fee increases would help.  However, there was now the added risk of refund, which was what the aforementioned ‘higher expectations’ referred to.  Also, this is not ringfenced funding so there is no obligation for the Council to keep the funding within the service.

·        A Member asked about the aforementioned freeze in recruitment and asked had there not been some sort of warning about the likely impact on the Planning Service? 

o   The Interim Executive Director said the recruitment freeze was applied right across the Council but at the time the Planning Service wasn’t singled out as an area where it would have such a significant impact. 

·        It was asked if Bristol City Council was the only local authority in the west of England that doesn’t pay planners professional fees?

Officers said it was not the only one as far as they knew.  It was however highlighted with regards to recruitment and retention issues that the Council was also competing with buoyant private sector and it needed to show that it can offer a competitive package to employees.

·        A Member asked what system was were currently in place to deal with high numbers of applications, for example was there a triage system in place? 

o   Officers said yes that type of system was already in place.  They were also increasingly looking to use the filters that are in the application management system to help streamline and speed up the process, for example grouping applications that had no objections so that they could be dealt with more quickly.  But there were a number of competing pressures involved here and doing that could mean other applications not being dealt with in the correct timeframe.  This in turn can increase the risk of non-determination appeals which means more work for the team and decisions are being taken out the Council’s hands. 

·        A Member said they understood there were numerous reasons that could warrant fast-tracking applications but it was important to retain transparency and not lose the public’s trust.  What could be done about this?

o   Officers said they receive lots of valid requests from various parties about fast-tracking applications and they try to be as accommodating as possible but they cannot allow the system to be abused either. The Service was in the process of overhauling the messaging that’s put online and so as to be as clear as possible about prioritisation processes.  The current situation demonstrates the myriad of impacts and consequences a ‘broken’ planning service creates  across the board and how important a well-functioning planning authority was to a council.  In the next two to three weeks a new update would also be put on the website which would make it clearer what the waiting times were for respective applications.

·        A discussion took place about the modelling of potential increased productivity and if the levels on the graphs were really feasible? 

o   Officers said the information the modelling was based on was only available relatively recently and so their understanding was still growing very quickly in this area.  There were still many decisions to be made about what was best, particularly in the longer-term, to maintain sustainability and also for example, make sure the graduates knew there were development opportunities and feel valued in the team and looked after.

The Member said they agreed with that but they were sceptical it was possible to raise the productivity of the whole team by a third. 

Officers said it was fortunate there were more of what could be described as straightforward applications for the new members of the team to pick up which would help the productivity levels and waiting times.

The Chief Planner said that it was crucial for the service to get to a sustainable position.  The situation had been going on for a considerable time but officers were confident they were on the right path now and the service would improve.

The Interim, Executive Director reiterated how important the Planning Service was and that this clearly demonstrated that no more funding could come out of the service in the foreseeable future and that any further savings would be counterproductive. 

The Chair thanked officers for their time and the helpful discussion.