Co-operation or Leadership?

Duty to Co-operate on Strategic Planning

For the past 3 months I have been working 2 days week in secondment to PAS, on a project to help embed the new ‘duty to co-operate’ on strategic planning.

My day job is with East Midlands Councils (EMC), a ‘sub national’ grouping of local authorities, where I work on an eclectic range of issues including rail investment, climate change, developing CPD for council planners, and various consultancy projects for EMC member councils.   Before that I managed the regional planning function in theEast Midlandsfor 10 years, also leading on transport and housing investment. Given my background in the apparently ‘dirigiste’ world of regional planning, it may seem strange to some that I am working on a project about ‘co-operation’.

Mapping English councils

Until she moved on to better things, we used to beg favours from a friendly LG-Group GIS person to make maps for us (Zoe – you are missed). In theory, we still have arcview licenses somewhere but after at least two office moves and numerous changes in staff I don’t have the appetite to wrestle with the corporate IT people and get it re-installed and connected.

I decided to use open source software (QGIS), together with the newly opened Ordnance Survey data, to quickly hack together a few maps that use my local data as an attribute. The documentation I could find was either a bit worthy and slow, or expert and quick. If you half-know what you’re doing, and have a project in mind, these notes may help you make a map inside a day. 

It’s all about the people

I’m coming out of a long tunnel called “the planning benchmark”. I now have more facts on planning departments than any other human in the history of the universe, and I’m beginning to think of how I can use these facts as a force for good.

One part of the benchmark was customer feedback via freepost. Taking the feedback as a whole, there are some really clear messages that are really easy to respond to. One, though, is making me think a bit more. One question we asked applicants was something along the lines of “Were you helped to make your development happen ?” and this prompted lots of applicants to write comments in addition to giving marks. And what they said was “it depends on the officer assigned to you“.

Good suppliers deserve good references

I’ve never really used the blog to let off steam before. But bloody hell, there is something about OJEU procurement processes that creates steam quite nicely. I’m part-way through a live procurement, so I can’t go into much detail. In summary, as one way to reduce the paperwork required from suppliers we wanted to assign more weight to references. But some of the referees listed refused to give a reference. Such blinkered stupidity is beyond my comprehension. Let me explain why. 

It’s not you; is it me?

‘…how much responsibility for agent’s poor performance lies at the council’s door – are we managing services that reward agents that do the wrong thing’?

Some agents are great. Others not so great. The poor ones submit shoddy schemes that require rework – and the cost of that rework is presently paid for with public money. [as an aside, if local fees happen, that rework will be paid for by the good agents. But that's for another day.]

Earlier this year I wrote a piece  asking if publishing data on how quickly and successfully different agents get planning decisions would lead to better quality applications. It’s an uncomfortable way of looking at the world – it’s a council’s-eye view, it bashes agents and leaves councils unaccountable for their part.

A better (balanced) picture

I have, instead, decided to look at the world from the customer’s (agent’s) end. I’ve asked: What’s my experience working with different councils? Do I have to play by different rules each time? Why does council ‘A’ decide my application quicker than council ‘B’?

Heads of Planning are BUMs

Planning Advisory Service doesn’t advertise. If it did, I reckon an ‘advertorial’ would be appropriate and what follows is my attempt at writing one. It’s aimed primarily at those that could benefit from our support, but also at ourselves. You see, no matter how many hours of chin stroking in locked rooms we do putting our service plan together, there is always the nagging doubts… ‘have we got it right’?… ‘Do councils actually want what we’re offering?’… and the scary one; ‘are we relevant’?

I have just returned from a Peer Challenge at a really good council in the North of England. The myriad of interviews, document reading, tours and presentations that inform the review gave me the opportunity to assess, first hand, how relevant PAS services are. And I am going to slap PAS on the back and say well done. So, if you can’t bear self- congratulatory spiel look away now, if however you are interested in how PAS can help councils with some real examples, swallow hard and keep reading.

Well done will always be better than well said

It’s time to stop talking about what good is (a good application? a good service?), and to start delivering it. It’s time to stop blaming ‘the other’, recognise that we are serving the same end customer, and recognise our own contribution to creating better quality applications and delivering a better service.

View from the CIL

About a year ago it became apparent that the government was going to keep the fundamentals of the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL). Authorities who had paused to see what would happen with CIL started work on it again. I have been involved in both the CIL Front Runner projects and it has been a steep learning curve for all.

The key things I have learnt are:

The NPPF and a way out of the mist

Do you watch the TV show QI, now in its umpty-something series? They’ve recently introduced a new feature, called ‘Nobody knows’ where the panel wave a sign if they think Stephen Fry has asked a question to which there is no known answer. I’d wave this if I was asked ‘what does the presumption in favour of sustainable development mean?’

A lot has already been written and said about it. From my perspective

Old dog, same tricks

PAS is supporting authorities in getting their plans in place. I have spoken to over 100 authorities over the past few months. So what? Well, one key phrase I’m hearing is “of course we have had to stop work on the core strategy to see how we can turn it into a local plan”. The following is not a criticism of any of those authorities, but I want to just throw this out here:

Your core strategy IS your local plan.

A local plan is not a