Agenda item

The Chair welcomed Councillor David Brackenbury, Executive Member for Growth & Regeneration to the meeting.

The Scrutiny Commission considered a report of the Assistant Director of Growth & Regeneration which provided an update on the work that had been and continued to be undertaken to review the planning service within North Northamptonshire.  The report was marked as item 5 on the agenda.

Prior to 1 April 2021, a considerable amount of work had been undertaken by the North Northamptonshire Chief Planning Officers group to ensure that the planning function would be in a position to operate safely and legally when the transition to North Northamptonshire Council (NNC) occurred.

It is now evident that NNC had inherited significant disparities between the capacity available across each of the area planning teams and that the performance of the teams and their working practices varied.  Further work was required to bring together the former planning teams to ensure that they operated in a consistent manner and could deliver similar levels of performance.

During discussion, the following principal points were noted:

i.       Whilst performance across the teams would mean that NNC was unlikely to be in the top quartile in the short-term, it would still be above average.  In the first six months of the new Council, around 2000 planning decisions had been issued, which was more than in the history of the four sovereign councils.

ii.      It was a credit to staff that this level of service was being maintained whilst the integration of services was taking place.  It was acknowledged that this would take time, investment and effort.  However, some members expressed disappointment that with an extra year of the Shadow Authority we were not further forward in the transformation process and the expected conclusion date of 2024/25 was a long time away.  The Executive Member pointed out that the final year of Future Northants in the lead-up to vesting day had taken place in the midst of a national pandemic and a number of lockdowns.  He also advised that the Administration were aware of the remaining issues that needed to be addressed within the planning service and that work was ongoing to complete this and he would be happy to report back regularly to Scrutiny.

iii.     Staffing was an issue on a national basis as the market around planning professionals was currently difficult.  The aim was to reduce the reliance on contractors, but we needed to be clear on how the teams would be structured.  Planning enforcement particularly had a weak jobs market and whilst it was accepted more staff were needed, this needed to be considered carefully.  Future restructures had to be undertaken within a budget envelope and the aim was to deliver the best services within that envelope.

iv.     The proposal for a S106 Team was welcomed.  There was great concern that if we did not spend these monies, developers could take them back as not being required. It was not possible at this time to provide details of every S106 agreement as they were stored in a number of different databases, monitored in different ways and the resources were not the same in each area.  An internal audit report on S106 had been commissioned and was now awaiting a management response, which was expected in December.  It was suggested that the Commission examine the report when it was available to understand the recommendations which would help to scope any future work.

v.      Officers acknowledged that Covid had had an impact on the amount of work which had been able to be undertaken so the focus had been changed to ensure that a safe and legal service was in place.  A significant amount of business as usual work was still taking place including starting a review of the Joint Core Strategy and other planning policy work. 

vi.     The digitalisation of the planning service along with the rationalisation of back-office IT systems was expected to achieve savings, but this would be a large project with the five existing systems needing to be transferred into a new system.  There were a number of back-office systems available in the market that we would need to consider, as well as scoping how digitalisation of some of the planning processes could be achieved and the hardware and software necessary to deliver this.  Purchasing an off the shelf product would not in itself deliver digitalisation but needed to be a part of the overall ICT solution for planning.

vii.   It was noted that the County Council’s former CMIS website had now been switched off, so members and the public were unable to see previous planning applications.  Officers advised that NNC were not able to host the previous website due to security issues, however discussions were being held with the Leader and Chief Executive about how to proceed. 

The Commission identified a number of possible future areas of work including performance, redesign of services, enforcement and S106.  Officers would come back with more definitive timelines.

RESOLVED to note the report and the areas the Scrutiny Commission would like to examine in the future.