MEPS tools part 2 – “the factory gate”

After a fairly heavy set-up, this is a more relaxed look at some of the visualisations possible when you have benchmarked your data. This, if you like, is the pay-off for the hassle of aligning your data with the standards. Our first one is nicknamed “the factory gate”, and treats the application system as if it were a manufacturing plant.

MEPs tools part 1 – installing R, ggplot2 and sample data

To ease the burden of supporting our benchmarking project “managing excellent planning services” (aka MEPS) we have been experimenting with some stats toys. While this started out as a “howto” in excel, the idea of being welded to a mouse for the next few weeks did not appeal. This is the technical set-up, where I describe in some detail the tools and code used to make the graphs that benchmark performance. Following on from this I go through the five sets of visualisations that support MEPS. If you want to know how we made it, or if you are living in a local authority trying to find ways of tracking performance, this might just be useful.

There are always two sides to a story

I have just returned, tired but happy, from participating as a team member in a planning peer review at Bromsgrove district council. I was lucky enough to be part of a dynamic, positive and hugely experienced team of member and officer peers and IDeA staff and found the whole experience extremely positive. This experience has prompted me to consider the huge benefits that can be drawn from the peer review process, which is after all one of the IDeA’s unique selling points. Peers in this context are unique being of the sector, for the sector. This means that generally there is no animosity or resentment directed toward them during the course of a review and officers and members alike open up in a genuine way – something that I think rarely happens at inspection, or indeed during other “critical friend” opportunities such as the PINS frontloading visits.

talk is cheap

The forthcoming National Policy Statements will not be assessed for carbon and the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) is not required to consider climate change in its decisions.  So how will we meet carbon reduction targets if major infrastructure is built without adequate consideration of the consequences for carbon?  Local planning authorities will need to produce impact assessments for applications being handled by the IPC.  How will this be funded and what support will planners have in preparing such assessments?  The Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum on Friday raised more questions than it answered.

The topic was The implementation and impact of the Planning Act 2008 and the speakers and audience focussed on the NPSs, the IPC and climate change.  To be fair, Sir Michael Pitt (Chair of the IPC) and Richard McCarthy (Director General, Housing and Planning, DCLG) had responses to the above questions, some of which were more convincing than others.  But they weren’t nearly as convincing as Hugh Ellis’s characteristically blunt thrashing of the regime.

Planning Alerts broken

I’m a big fan of planning alerts and the whole raft of community minded web-geeks who do a brilliant job in harnessing web technology in their own time in the service  of a better world (see BCCDIY for a great example).

I subscribed for updates for my own area.  It was handy – especially as no similar service is offered by my council.  That didn’t bother me, as the gap was being filled.  I’d actually been thinking about writing something here about how councils might take advantage of the Planning Alerts API to make information on the planning policy documents/consultations etc available in a similar way.

But before I got around to doing that, Royal Mail legal action against Ernestmarples.com – a site that provides the conversion of postcode info to geo-spatial info that planningalerts is dependent on - shut it down.

if you’d like more information or ideas on what to do about it, please visit the ernestmarples blog.

or:

• Early Day Motion to open access for not-for-profit use.
• No10 petition.

wearing my ‘climate change goggles’ again…

I’ve been wearing ‘climate change goggles’ for the last few months.  This isn’t nearly as fun as wearing beer goggles, but the consequences are much more constructive.  Last week I went to a seminar on using spatial planning to deliver health outcomes.  The event was part of the launch of the King’s Fund report on ‘The Health Impacts of Spatial Planning Decisions’ which provides evidence for how planning policy and decisions can affect health outcomes.  Viewing the event through the climate change lens allowed me to focus on a few key links between national agendas for health and the environment in the UK.

Climate change and health are cross cutting issues throughout planning policy statements.  Work on both climate change mitigation and adaptation have direct effects on health outcomes in the UK.  Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by collocating services and providing infrastructure for non-car travel will reduce air pollution and ‘obesogenic’ environments, in turn reducing heart and respiratory disease and obesity.  Dealing with energy efficiency in new-build and existing housing stock is essential to reduce CO2 emissions but is also vital to address our vulnerability to increasing extreme weather events (e.g. heatwaves like the summer of 2003).

LDF support for LPAs – now is the time!

The new PAS Self Referral Programme of LDF Support

PAS are making a range of support available to all local planning authorities (LPAs) of England to help them produce their local development frameworks. 

This is a great opportunity for local authorities to get free or least heavily subsidised support, advice or help in challenging areas of producing a LDF.

Why are we doing this?

Face Value

I spent nearly 8 hours in transit yesterday. I had a 40 minute meeting in the middle. It was worth every second. Why? As part of our direct support here at PAS, we aim to speak to more councils directly. Face to face contact is really important. I found out that Richmondshire is getting on with things. There are 1.5 fte staff working on the LDF. They used clever marketing and communications. They upped the number of consultation responses from 100 to 1,600. 

There may well be things we can help them with. We will carry out one of our diagnostic visits. I feel certain this will uncover a lot of good practice. Local authorities need skills. More importantly, I feel, they need confidence. Through our direct support, we can uncover good work already going on. Many authorities seem to shrug off the work they do as ‘the day job’. This may well be true. But just because one person thinks something is obvious, it doesn’t mean everyone will. It is our job to help share this knowledge. It is our job to get out there and see it first hand.

I look forward to my next journey.

Managing an excellent planning service

As I mentioned a short while ago, we’re about to launch a new series. Originally our attempt to take the NPIP work forward, it has grown into a longer-term piece of support to help local authorities adapt not only to a (cross fingers) brief downturn in applications but what may be long-term pressure on operating budgets. 

Affordable housing delivery

One of the many worries arising from the recession is the sustainability of the model for delivering affordable housing. The numbers are pretty clear – taking a negotiated slice of new developments does not work any more. It doesn’t matter if you have a policy saying 40% of new units must be affordable – 40% of zero is zero. And, the higher your percentage the more vunerable you are to looking like a barrier to economic recovery (or being played off against somewhere down the road).

In the last week I have heard “Community Land Trust” mentioned most days by different people. I’m determined to resist twitter, but if I did I bet I could show you a graph of how this idea is really taking off now. Like 6-year-olds playing football, local government can only have one idea at a time and it seems that this is it. Inevitable shortened to “CLT”, it seems that ‘big’ is the new ’small’.