BNG Online: Bringing the sector together to deliver Biodiversity Net Gain

Biodiversity Net Gain today (April 2) becomes mandatory for small site developments. As RichardPritchard asked back in February: ‘Are we Ready’? There’s a lot to learn and quickly for developers working with and submitting planning applications, and for local planning authorities (LPAs) receiving and considering them. Two of the big challenges for all of us are:

• Where to start? There is an impressive body of work out there – how do I navigate the plethora of guidance, regulations, case studies, toolkits?
  
• Understanding what happens before and after ‘my part’ of the process. LPA planners need to understand the sorts of things developers are grappling with, developers need to know what support the LPA can provide, and what information is required and when.

BNG Online – getting acquainted quickly with BNG
I recently moved across programmes at PAS to begin work on BNG. In at the deep end, lots to learn and enormous shoes to fill. My colleagues Beccy Moberly and Richard Crawley have steered the PAS BNG ship expertly, creating a wealth of pragmatic BNG advice and establishing a network of over 1,000 members.

In my new pair of enormous shoes, and standing on the shoulders of giants, I’ve been working on what (somewhat serendipitously) is the perfect foil for accelerating my understanding. It’s called ‘BNG Online’, it launches today and is a collaboration between Future Homes Hub & PAS.

‘BNG Online’ is a new digital resource that brings together in one place, insight, guidance, and tools for delivering BNG. It is designed to help developers and local planning authorities to work together and factor in BNG at the key stages of the planning process. It is organised around 4 key development ‘stages’:

• Sites – how are they selected and allocated?
• Application – what advice is available, what information is required, what do I need to do?
• Delivery – delivering and maintaining habitats, on & off-site.
• Monitoring – how do we know what’s happening and who is responsible?

This is just a start
Some elements of BNG Online are more developed than others (e.g. what does (can?) anyone really know about monitoring until BNG is a little more established?). The planning application stages (the ‘PAS bit’) include a summary of each stage, key considerations for LPAs and links to regulations, guidance and resources that will assist in preparing and processing a planning application. It is not exhaustive, still being developed (Beta they call it) and will grow and be updated regularly as we learn more from the experiences of planners and applicants using it.

The sector working together
This is a great example of the sector coming together. As well as collaborating with Future Homes Hub, BNG Online has been developed with the input of Natural England, Defra, DLUHC, Joe’s Blooms, Verna.Earth and development industry bodies representing both large and SME developers.

Why this is important
If I have learned one thing over the last month, it is that it is a mistake (despite how the system for planning approval has been designed) to think of BNG as a post-permission matter. Successful strategies for the delivery of biodiversity gain have to be considered early, and throughout the planning process. BNG is new for everyone and the more information that LPAs and applicants can share, the more we can all learn about what makes the process efficient and what works best. BNG Online is designed to facilitate this.

We will update and improve BNG Online as we learn more. This is where planners and developers using it can help – tell me what you think here or email me (martin.hutchings@local.gov.uk) and let me know how it can be improved.

Biodiversity net gain – are we ready?

Mandatory biodiversity net gain under the Environment Act is just round the corner with Government confirming at the end of September that all the regulations and guidance setting out the details of legal requirements will be out in November and BNG will start for major applications in January 2024, swiftly followed by small sites in April 2024 and NSIPs by November 2025.

PAS started its biodiversity net gain (BNG) project in March 2021 with the aim of helping local planning authorities (LPAs) to be ‘Day 1 ready’ for BNG when it became mandatory. So, two and half years on: Where are we?, How’s it going? and Are we ‘ready’?

What does ‘ready’ mean?

ready

/ˈrɛdi/

adjective

1. in a suitable state for an action or situation; fully prepared.

I ponder this question a lot and am often asked for my thoughts on LPA readiness for BNG. In the context of our project plan agreed with our Defra-led steering group, we said that we’d evaluate the project based on a target of 80% of a sample of LPAs being aware and agreeing that our resources help them do their jobs. We feel we’ve met this brief with 99% of local planning authorities in England having engaged in the project in some way (by coming to an event and/or joining our LPA officer network) and more than 90% of attendees of our events saying they were somewhat or very helpful in polls, plus lots of informal positive feedback coming our way.

We also know that more local authorities are working on BNG over time – at an event we hosted in October 2022, 76% of attendees said that their authority had started working on BNG, this was up to 83% at a similar event in April 2023 and I’m sure would be even higher now. Our practitioner network for local authority officers has grown from around 100 members a year ago to over 600 now.

Is anyone ready?

We are definitely more ready in the sense that we know a lot more about how mandatory BNG is going to work now than we did two and a half years ago. Aside from the Environment Act 2021 receiving Royal Assent in November 2021, we have had a BNG consultation and a response to that consultation from Government, plus Defra BNG guidance and blogs published. Then, at the end of September, the press release that set out a timetable for the implementation of mandatory BNG. Alongside all this information, our knowledge and understanding has grown as LPAs start implementing BNG and testing how the system will work, shown by the depth and number of FAQs we now have answers to and discussions on our practitioners’ network forum.

Local authorities are not alone in being more ready than they were, but maybe not totally ready yet. Developers need to understand the detail of legal requirements before they can have planning applications ready to submit and we will all have only two months to work this out for major applications, and luckily a few more months until April 2024 for small sites. PAS has been working closely with the Future Homes Hub to understand BNG readiness across the board and feed into Government’s plans.

A key thing to bear in mind is the shared positivity across the public and private sector around BNG as a mechanism to improve nature and people’s lives, the keenness to find solutions and recognition of the excellent opportunity BNG gives us to improve the status quo. We need to focus on this as we delve into the detail to stop us getting too bogged down in what might becoming frustrating about the process and the ‘don’t know’s.

Does this mean LPAs are or aren’t ready?

Local planning authorities are not a homogenous bunch and vary considerably in how they work, including in their preparations for BNG, so we can’t say that LPAs are ready or not as a cohort. How about we identify which councils aren’t ready for BNG? Well, that’s tricky too. We can’t base it on who’s engaged with our project, as I know at least two of the LPAs that haven’t engaged have been implementing BNG through Local Plan policies for a couple of years. We also can’t decide readiness according to whether the local authority has a BNG policy in their Local Plan, as that very much depends on the council’s local plan review cycle and where they are with that. Some LPAs are already implementing BNG based on the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) requirement for development to ‘secure measurable net gains for biodiversity’ where appropriate and may have developer advice notes setting out their expectations to meet this, but no Local Plan policy. We have shared examples of these on our webpages.

A recent RTPI survey highlighted issues with preparation for BNG amongst local authority planners and a lack of confidence in practical requirements of BNG, but this wasn’t the case across the board for all those that responded. And it’s important to think about the difference between whether an individual planner is ‘ready’ and whether their local authority as a whole is ‘ready’. We have a hugely informed set of folk making up our LPA BNG practitioner network, ranging from planners to BNG officers to lawyers, with variation in understanding and knowledge of BNG shared across those groups.

Ready for mandatory BNG?

And what does ‘ready’ really mean? In the end, being ‘ready’ probably means prepared for when BNG becomes mandatory. For local authorities, they will have to be able to receive and determine planning applications with BNG, i.e. assessing whether they meet the mandatory BNG requirements, and ready to assess and approve BNG Plans prior to development commencement. Even the most advanced local authority probably wouldn’t say they are yet at that stage, as we look forward to the publication of the secondary legislation and associated guidance that will set out the detail in November, and will enable final preparations to be made in planning departments for applications arriving from January 2024.

Expectations of ‘readiness’ also differ across different audiences and some of the feedback from developers and others around a lack of local authority readiness may stem from higher expectations of what they should be doing beyond the legal requirements, for example, engaging in the off-site BNG market, providing mechanisms (S106) to secure habitat bank sites, etc. Many local authorities are doing some excellent work in this space, including Buckinghamshire Council, Plymouth City Council and Greater Manchester Combined Authority, but many others are not yet engaged in this level of detail or have decided not to take on this role. 

How ‘ready’ is ‘ready’?

The PAS BNG readiness checklist, based on existing experience amongst local authorities, pulls out what we think LPAs need to do to meet the mandatory requirements, but also identifies activities beyond those that will enable BNG to be a success locally. These include establishing a strategic approach to BNG locally and setting up monitoring, enforcement and reporting arrangements. A LPA’s role in the latter is nicely covered by this article for the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM), which highlights the key solutions to LPA readiness – working together, innovating and sharing best practice – across the public and private sector.

PAS has a range of good practice Local Plan policies and SPDs, as well as S106 and planning conditions for BNG on our webpages that have been shared with us by local authorities. For example, Doncaster BNG Supplementary Planning Document sets out further information for applicants on applying the relevant local plan policy on BNG. GMCA Biodiversity Net Gain Guidance for Greater Manchester has been prepared to enable developers and potential offset providers to run biodiversity assessments in a consistent way across Greater Manchester. The document also enables the consistent verification of biodiversity assessments by local planning authorities. Buckinghamshire Council Strategic Significance and Spatial Risk Guidance sets out how the council will assess these two elements of the Biodiversity Metric to help support local nature recovery before the LNRS is in place. We have also shared case studies of early preparation for mandatory BNG by Cornwall Council, Bath and Northeast Somerset Council, Tunbridge Wells Borough Council and the London Borough of Sutton.

For me, readiness is not a binary state, but signals readiness to start the journey and some of that will only come through skills and experience gained as we test out BNG in practice. So, as I blogged over two years ago (!) BNG won’t be perfect to start with, but we can give it a go and get better (and more ‘ready’) as we go. In the meantime, the key areas I would focus on if I was a local authority officer would be:

• Getting familiar with what we know already about how BNG works – look at the PAS BNG webpages and past events, including on the Biodiversity Metric, and join our practitioner network to help you get started.
• Reviewing how the Local Plan – vision, policies – and any SPDs fit with BNG, including how existing policy compares to the legislative BNG requirements, to be clear on what are policy requirements and what are legal requirements.
• Determining what skills and specialist resource, including ecology, the council is likely to need and how to procure it to make sure you can cover when specialist advice is needed on planning applications. See the PAS BNG resourcing guide for some ideas.
• Getting some dates in the diary in December/early January, once the BNG regulations and guidance are published, to train development management planners, validation officers and Planning Committee members on the detail of what they need to do. See our BNG essentials slide-pack as a starter for ten on this.
• Understanding and planning for how the council will update its local validation requirements to encompass BNG.
• Integrating BNG into the LPA’s internal consultation triage process, i.e. when planners consult ecologists and other specialists, and considering whether to put in place any other procedures to help manage specialist input, like BNG casework meetings or having a BNG specialist planner identified.

In the end, we just need to give it a go, be as prepared as we can be, use all the support and guidance out there and work together to make it work as well as we possibly can, learning as we go along. Despite all of the angst about how ready everyone is, one thing is absolutely clear which is that the purpose of BNG – planning to deliver a better outcome for nature – is 100% supported by planners and their stakeholders.

Working in local government – let’s reinvigorate the USP

The recent Local Government Workforce Survey published in January 2023 highlighted some of the recruitment issues being faced by local government. The study found more than half (58 per cent) of all county, district and unitary councils said they were experiencing difficulties recruiting planning officers. The hardest to recruit roles aren’t usually the graduate or junior planner spots, it’s the senior/principal/team leader type roles which makes up the biggest resource gap in local government.

The difficulty in recruiting experienced planners is certainly something that crops up in most conversations I have with councils; and it not just recruitment, it’s the ability to keep experienced staff from leaving local government too.

There are no quick fixes and getting new people into planning or keeping those already in it will require a collective effort from the industry.

How can more people be attracted to public service, planning particularly? If local government wants to draw people into Planning, there is a need to think about what are the drivers and motivations people have for leaving and what are the unique selling points (USPs) that can attract people back to local government, or into it for the first time.

So, I decided to find out. It all started with a relatively innocuous LinkedIn post saying I was interested in speaking to anyone who had left a local planning authority in the last two years to go into an agency, consultancy or private sector work. What were the drivers and motivations for leaving? And had the grass really been greener? I certainly wasn’t expecting the level of response I got! Within two hours, I had over thirty direct messages and forty comments from people wanting to explain why they had left local government. I’d initially thought I’d speak to only one or two people, but given the level of interest, I decided to get more scientific about it.

I then set off on a round of quantitative and qualitative research interviews with thirty planners and place-making professionals. There was a mix of those who had left for the private sector (developers/consultancies/housebuilders) and those who had taken up agency or interim work within the public sector. There was a reasonable mix of levels of seniority too. Not a very big sample size by academic standards I know, but it gave me some insights into reasons and potential solutions.

As someone passionate about local government, some of the conversations were hard to hear; however, all but two ended on a hopeful, even optimistic note that all we need to do is reinvigorate the local government USP to coax people back. 100% of respondents who had gone into the private sector stated they would return to local government in the future, if the reasons for leaving were redressed.

So why had people left? And how can local government reinvent its USP?

The first thing people I spoke to mentioned was salary difference; unsurprising really as a rule of thumb, private sector salaries are higher than local government. The recent Interim State of the Profession 2023 RTPI survey supports this and found that 68% of local authority planners saw competitive salaries as a key challenge for local authorities keeping staff. 13% of the people I spoke to had moved to a lower-level position without taking a cut in pay, less responsibility and workload for the same money. Heartbreakingly 6% of respondents said they had pleaded with managers to stay at their council if they could come close to matching the salary difference, around 5K per annum more.

The research also involved speaking to recruiters of agency staff for local government positions. They reported that salaries in the private sector and with hourly rates for agency roles hitting £65-£70 an hour. Increased pay motivates people to get on their books.

Let’s be practical local government is unlikely to match private sector pay, and the local government USP can only be partially monetary based. My research found that the increase in income from leaving local government was between £20-£35K, and for some, that meant a 25% pay increase. Figures, I’ll agree, would be hard to say no to.

The gulf between public and private pay scales is too wide; although increasing public sector wages would help narrow that gulf. There are things in the toolbox being used but not widespread. Local Government Workforce Survey shows that over 20% of councils found market supplements an effective tool for tackling retention. Still, it’s only used by 10% of respondents surveyed.

The second biggest (89%) reason given was a lack of career progression from mid roles such as ‘senior planner, principal, deputy team leader’ into the next step of more managerial & leadership roles. The phrase  ‘dead man’s shoes’ was a reoccurring joke within the interviews. Yet councils are good at career progression; the Local Government Workforce Survey found about half (49 per cent) of counties, districts and unitaries have career framework/grade systems for planning jobs. However, this data isn’t broken down by type of role but I bet it’s for graduates going up to planner roles rather than for more senior roles. Most planning teams have a triangular organisation structure with fewer opportunities to climb the tree upwards. One respondent stated, “Local authorities are bad at showing what the more senior career choices are”. If local government Planning is going to revamp the USP, we need to get creative around senior career progression.

We need to think about

• The potential for other organisational structures, expanding routes to senior roles and non-managerial career routes,
• More, and at a higher frequency, legacy & succession Planning for leadership roles,
• Expanding career graded roles to higher roles, an approach being taken by Lake District National Park Planning Team already,
• More opportunities for shadowing and mentoring by managers and senior leaders,
•  Opportunities for loaning people between councils to gain senior role experience,
• Genuine career development at all stages and seniority of roles,
• Expand the practice of shared job descriptions to move people sideways and upwards, keeping the talent inside.

Local government USP has been eroded; it used to be seen as the best work/life balance on offer with the benefits and flexible working, particularly attractive to parents for part-time opportunities and parental leave benefits. The pandemic has led to widespread homeworking and surprise; surprise productivity wasn’t affected. The myth that all homeworkers are slackers has been well and truly busted. The private sector has upped its game, and the gulf between those benefits has narrowed; however, local government still has the edge, which should be capitalised on. Councils have also been behind the curve in encouraging people back to workplaces, with some no longer having an office to work from. One respondent, who was in that situation, said: “Working at home all the time, it becomes a lonely place.”

The flexibility and work/life balance in the private sector was a mixed bag for those interviewed. Over 70% reported having less flexibility in choosing the frequency of going into the office than in their previous local government role. Many said they had core hours and there was the expectation that some events outside of working hours would be mandatory. Some respondents stated they had very flexible working arrangements; one person said, ‘I’m treated like an adult, as long as the work is done, and deadline met, I can do it at whatever time I want’. So a mixed bag and perhaps dependant on how flexible the employer is. Of those interviewed who had gone into an agency or interim work, a significant proportion, 75%, were doing work for local authorities and reported very little difference in the flexibility offered. Based on the limited dialogue I’ve had; local government still has the edge in providing work/life balance and flexible opportunities. Still, it’s been watered down, and we need to reset the dial. The Local Government Workforce Survey found that just over a quarter (27 per cent) of councils considered flexible working the most effective recruitment and retention tool. We need to get that up to 100%

Work/life balance will need to be part of the answer if we are to attract new talent into local government too. Recent involvement in the Pathways to Planning graduate programme has made me realise that flexible working is one of the first things graduates seek in their first planning job. So if ultimate work/life balance is the answer to reinvigorate the local government USP, how do we go about it?

Well, we could take a leaf out of  South Cambridgeshire District Council and Swale Borough Council, who have moved to a four-day week, and Swale has also introduced some additional annual leave days at Christmas time. When Swale asked its employees about the measures, it highlighted support for improving work-life balance, better productivity and being a more modern organisation.

Ultimate flexibility does need to be tempered with the fact only some people like to work at home as much as they like. My personal opinion is that Planning requires a degree of team discussion and learning-by-doing with more senior officers. So how do you balance being flexible and retaining the team’s camaraderie? It is about finding a balance and being clear about what that is. Recent job adverts (including a recent one for Sevenoaks District Council) were clear about how often attendance at the office is expected.

Establishing the balance of ‘being all together’ and WFH is critical to returning one of the most fundamental USPs of working in local government (in my humble opinion). In the words of Sister Sledge, ‘We are family; I got all my planners with me’. Working at a council really is like being part of a family and making connections for life. I still have contact with many people I’ve worked with over the years, and I’ve heard many a planner tell me they met their spouse at a council. Of the recent leavers I questioned, 93% said they missed the family feel that local government working gives, which made leaving such a hard decision. One respondent said, “It’s a sense of pride for the borough; the team was fiercely loyal to the borough and communities in a way that the private sector won’t understand”. Another stated, “Private work is not the same culturally; the family feel of a council is so unique”.

Getting the right balance of working flexibly will need to go hand in hand with a reinvigoration of the ‘nurturing’ element of getting the family vibe back. Of those who have left local government to go into agency/interim, 100% reported that their learning & development opportunities were significantly reduced in their new roles but also that a decline in personal development support had been a reason for leaving.

Respondents who left local government for the agency said – “I’ve had to make my own CPD, and that takes my own money and time”, and “I get no support for growing my skills.”

Over half of the respondents who had left for the private sector also mentioned a lack of learning and development had been behind their departure. On numerous engagements with planning officers, I’ve heard tales of budget cuts, no paid-for events or travel funding, and no time off for networking opportunities. One respondent said, “There were only two people in the team who were RTPI as they were the only two willing to pay their own subs every year.”

A vital element of the family vibe is the camaraderie and supportive environment local government gives an individual. Getting that back isn’t as simple as making everyone get back to the office full-time; things have changed, and working practices are better – plus, if local government is to boost its flexible working USP, then it should be heading that way. The nurturing needs to happen in the current working practices context, The nurturing won’t happen by osmosis anymore, and we need to get more structured about it. I can almost hear the naysayers now ‘I haven’t got time to do all this’ and ‘This is all well and good, but..’. My point is we need to make time to nurture people by

• Programming in more formal communication and setting diary appointments,
• Lining up mentors or shadowing opportunities,
• Recognising the importance of training and more informal CPD by allowing people to engage with others and learn via networking.

Getting the family vibe USP of working in local government is going to be key if we want to attract people into the sector. Growing your own in local government works but it requires dedication on behalf of the council to provide that nurturing environment that local government is famous for.

One thing I was surprised to unearth through my micro research project was the shift in risk appetite. I’m well aware that the job for life days are long gone, but working at a local authority was, until recently, viewed as a secure job environment. Local government positions are typically permanent and offer job security, and that isn’t necessarily seen, at least at the moment, as being the significant benefit, it once did. Respondents agreed with the statement, “The pandemic has made people have a higher risk appetite”. The recruiters involved in the research agreed that risk appetite for less secure positions is something they see anecdotally too.

70% of respondents said that before the pandemic, they were not considering a move to the private sector or agency, but as one respondent said,’ I thought if not now then when, what have I got to lose’. The risk appetite has increased, but perhaps it is due to the security provided, not from a permanent local government job but from the knowledge there’s a lot of work out there for those seeking it. 86% of agency & interim respondents stated they felt secure that there was available work from local councils to negate the loss of a permanent contract, a quote ‘ I’m never out of work’.  

But is the abundance of work available for agency & interim staff a symptom of there simply being too few planners in planning departments to do the workload, especially in development management caseloads. FYI – the highest I’ve come across this year was one officer who had 292 applications with their initials next to them.  After financial reasons the second highest (89%) motivator for leaving local government was the high workloads and linked to that ‘burn out’. There’s not much I can say about this, other than its gnarly out there and we all know it.

What is compounding the matter and leading to officers feeling harassed is the current working practises and how members of the public and councillors engage with officers. I heard terms like ‘bombardment’, ‘relentless’, ‘incessant’, ‘demanding’, and ‘harassment’. Has the next-day-delivery mindset embedded itself? One respondent commented, “People are moving for a break from the burnout”. For local government to reinvent its USP, we need to reset the expectations of all the stakeholders and the public on what Planning is and what it can and cannot achieve. This is a hard nut to crack, and a national rebranding of ‘Planning’ is needed? This blog isn’t going to be able to cover the multitude of issues causing the burnout and so it focussed instead on some practical things  councils could do and are doing. We need;

• Some clear comms on what Planning is. I enjoyed the recent example by Wandsworth and the South Warwickshire Development Plan Youtube channel.
• Reaffirming and maintaining trust between Councillors and officers. However, maintaining relationships and a structured approach to communication takes a lot of work.
• Setting clear expectations for the public around how to contact people and timescales for applications & enquiries

I recently lectured at Leeds Beckett University to a group of post-grad students. The students were enthusiastic and got stuck in to the workshop task I set of ‘If I could change the planning system, what would I do’. However, whilst they knew the council’s role in the planning system. Scarily they seemed unaware of the varied and exciting local government career options. Most were only considering private sector opportunities, apart from two students already at councils. All of us, including Planning schools, must do better in bringing practitioners’ voices into the classroom to estoile the virtues of local government careers.

So what are the USPs of working in local government that we need to provide for future planners and coax those who have left?

Family vibes – As mentioned, local government needs to find its family vibe again; that camaraderie and team support is still there we just need to make it happen a bit more structured and less organically than before. Even in desperate overworked times, we need to make the time for personal development and bringing back the nurturing of internal talent. Whilst the training budgets might not be available anytime soon, allowing people the time to undertake learning away from staring at a screen needs to make a comeback.

Variety – There is a considerable amount of variety in local government, and this isn’t shouted about enough. No days are ever the same. In development management, each case is different; there are different scales and types of stuff to get your teeth into. You can flip from being a transport planner to an urban designer to an environmental specialist, all within a single application. Plan making is immensely varied with the development of evidence base, strategies, and community engagement. You can flip in a single day from demographer to site assessor to facilitator and policy writer in an afternoon! Councils are really good at providing opportunities to get straight into the big and exciting stuff; there’s so much opportunity for learning and personal growth within local government. One respondent reflected, “It’s exciting working in a local authority; there are opportunities to be exposed to so much variety of work across the councils; it’s really interesting”. This is something that respondents in the research missed, “I’ve been put back into a box; just do the policies and nothing else”.

There are things only a local authority can do – It’s pretty unique in local government to have a private sector counterpart of the profession; however, the simple fact is that there are elements of the planning system and implementing a national policy that can only be done by councils. You can’t make a Local Plan unless you’re in a local authority, and it’s the only place with the agency to be the decision maker on development proposals.

For plan making, it’s the only place where the strategy gets developed, and that involves making some critical bits of evidence around the need and community demographics (I loved that) without any agenda; it’s all about finding solutions for community benefit and being the voice of the community within the council.

Working in local government is the only way to improve a scheme and champion the community’s needs. Respondents agreed, “It’s so exciting having the autonomy to be the decision maker at a council; now I’m private, there’s always the client’s angle to include.”

Talking to people – Councils are the first port of call to discuss an issue. Working in local government allows conversations and genuine engagement with residents and stakeholders; plus, it is the only forum in which that engagement can result in decisions being made. Councils are good at talking to their communities, but perhaps Planning departments lag behind their councils regarding reach, methods, and available engagement tools. Local government is the best place to do it if you want a meaningful discussion with communities.

Politics – If you have an interest in politics and democracy, then start working in local government. It is the only place you can interact and view democracy up close. Seeing how local elections & appointing members work, taking part in the cut and thrust of the Planning Committee, and seeing how members bring the communities perspective to the development of a local plan are all absolutely fascinating. 

Working in local government is so varied and fulfilling for hundreds of reasons, and this article won’t be able to capture them all. Getting the USP of working in local government will be vital to attracting people into the planning profession and luring those that left back into the family.

Collectively, councils and the industry need to sell that USP. Let’s get the local government mojo back.

Can planners help to save our town centres?

Findings and reflections from a workshop on town centre regeneration at the PAS conference for Heads of Planning and Rising Stars, Wolverhampton July 2022¹

My home town – the new Glass Works and public square, Barnsley

“Town centres are close to my heart” said one conference delegate as we made our way to the town centre regeneration workshop in Wolverhampton earlier this month. I share her sentiments, especially for my own town centre in Barnsley, South Yorkshire.

Sometimes a victim of ridicule in the past, and with previous plans beset by problems and delays, the regeneration of Barnsley town centre is never the less emerging as a great success. Just this spring, Barnsley was amongst the top 10 places for both footfall and spend recovery following the removal of Covid restrictions, and you only have to walk around the place to see the new businesses and numbers of people. I think Barnsley and many similar town centres have a good story to tell, as well as some real opportunities in the future.

With these thoughts in mind I joined over 40 other planners, representing a range of different authorities and types of town centre, at the PAS conference to discuss recent trends and the role of planning in the future.

Town centres and high streets have experienced many changes and challenges over recent years, but few as significant as the Covid-19 pandemic with official lockdowns, radical changes in consumer spending and moves to flexible (home-based) working for many people. This workshop was a chance to take a step back and think about the issues and opportunities now facing our town centres. In particular, we explored three questions:

• What has been happening in our town centres over recent years?

• What does this mean for the role of our town centres in the future?

• What should planning be doing about this?

Along the way we looked at evidence showing the different rates of recovery from Covid lock downs last year, as well as more recent data on the level of food and drink spend in different centres. Add to this the phenomena of “Zoom Towns” and a rapid increase in the number of remote or flexibly based jobs being advertised in some places, and it is clear that something very interesting is happening in many areas.

As well as data and evidence, this workshop was also a chance to think more broadly and speculate about the factors likely to shape change in the future. We drew heavily on Mathew Carmona’s work on the existential crisis facing shopping streets and what makes a place attractive, which provides some good pointers on where planning practice should be focusing in a post covid economy, including the key factors shaping the way people choose to shop.

It would take too long to detail all the issues we covered, but I’ve attempted to capture the key points. Some of these reflect issues that are common to many town centres, but others suggest differing experiences in different type of centre or different regions of the country.

What has been happening in our town centres over recent years?

Many find it difficult to answer this question with confidence. Town centres are dynamic, with changing trends and patterns of decline or development that vary constantly. Frequent monitoring is often beyond the means of local planning teams. Added to this, the introduction of a new Use Class E in September 2020, which now covers the majority of town centre uses meaning that significant changes can take place on a high street without the need for planning permission or any formal interaction with local planners.

A few places, like Bolsover, are undertaking annual surveys of their town centre as well as utilising mobile phone data as a proxy for footfall. Others, such as Newbury, utilise data from a Business Improvement District. For many though, comprehensive evidence on the town centre is limited to local plan production or preparation of a masterplan.

Of course, anecdotal evidence is also an important source of information and there are some common experiences. The decline of town centre retail is not a new trend, but Covid has helped to accelerate this in many areas. Places as diverse as Canterbury and Plymouth, Colchester and Peterborough or Mid-Sussex and Beverley have all experienced the loss of department stores or familiar high street names.

Whilst this is common to larger towns, it is seen as less significant in smaller centres which have a stronger independent retail base and therefore less in the way of national multiples to lose. The differing experiences of larger and smaller town centres means generalisations are difficult and experience in places like Cheshire East and the East Riding suggest fewer problems for retail in their smaller towns.

A decline in retail has led to an increase in vacant units, but this contrasts with a boost in the number of food and drink-based businesses (including evening economy type venues) that is helping to re-animate town centres. It marks an increasingly important role for leisure in town centres, with planners from places as different as West Berkshire, Ipswich, Worthing and South Norfolk all experiencing the trend.

Many were also keen to talk about the increasing importance of town centre residential development. Given the introduction of a new Permitted Development Right (PDR) for the change of use from Class E to residential, this is a major part of Government policy and perhaps not surprising. But only a few places, such as Milton Keynes and Medway, report pressure for conversion of former offices to residential uses in significant numbers. Although it is a concern, PDR to residential is not yet seen as a significant trend in large parts of the country.

Instead, local councils are working hard to support new residential uses on planned sites as well as bring forward projects directly in partnerships with developers. The desire to attract town centre-based living in increasing numbers is an ambition that ran throughout the workshop and encompasses all areas. A good example is Dartford where town centre housing is not currently widespread, the new local plan encourages higher density housing, and the Council are addressing viability issues to bring forward difficult sites.

What does this mean for the role of town centres in the future?

More town centre housing, both higher and medium density, is something that many planners see as central to the future. This is based on the transport links and access to amenities that town centres offer, providing opportunities for sustainable housing on sites that become available as retail, commercial and other traditional land uses scale back.

Importantly though, planners are also alive to the benefits that a town centre residential community can bring in terms of increased spend and footfall for business as well the potential to attract new people to their district. At one end of the age scale, this may be younger professionals enjoying the opportunities of distance or flexible working and a town centre-based lifestyle. At the other end of the age spectrum, older and retired residents could be important town centre communities, benefitting from easy access to local services in amenities.

To support diversification, planners are also making efforts to introduce mixed-use development with many local authorities involved in direct investment to deliver hotels, leisure and residential alongside convenience retail schemes. For example, Cherwell Council are redeveloping a shopping centre with a hotel, supermarket, cinema and restaurant in Banbury, a significant financial commitment and long-term effort to diversify. In other places like Rochdale development is already underway and in Norwich change is being supported through City Deal and Transforming Cities Fund investment. Many councils have also taken ownership of vacant shopping space in preparation for new mixed-use schemes.

But this is not the case for all areas, and different town centres will pursue different strategies or seek to define themselves through different roles in the future. Participants talked about the Unique Selling Points (USP) they are trying to define for their town centres. For example, Canterbury is leveraging its heritage offer; whereas Worthing has an appeal through its seafront setting and proximity to the coast; and Bolsover needs to boost the provision of overnight accommodation to maximise potential for visitors to the castle and surrounding countryside.

Education also emerges as important, with some areas seeing positive impacts from the development of new further and higher education facilities. A new college campus alongside culture and leisure facilities is helping to transform a traditional town centre offer in Dudley, whilst Epsom has seen student footfall benefitting their town centre through a University of the Creative Arts. Peterborough is also seeking to establish a new university centre and Ashfield is introducing education hubs to its town centre.

What should planning be doing?

This was the question that generated the greatest amount of discussion and suggests town centres remain very much at the heart of local planners’ focus. Major areas of work for the future include:

• Ensuring stakeholder engagement – looking beyond traditional consultation, this means actively working with and alongside local groups, businesses, and other public services to share knowledge, facilitate constructive discussions and create consensus on long-term objectives. It’s more than the usual argument about how many car parking spaces are needed!

• Preparing comprehensive plans – many planners in the room are working on town centre master plans, strategies or supplementary planning documents. Although different plans will have a different planning status, they often bring together individual projects or schemes, set a policy framework and ensure that interventions are complementary or sequenced. A town centre plan can also help to build investor confidence as well as reduce the risk for Council assets in the town centre.

• Consolidating retail areas – rather than extending a town centre, regeneration in the future is about consolidation. This means defining and then strengthening the core of a town centre’s retail area as well as enabling positive change to the surrounding areas. Many in the workshop talked about managing the contraction of retail space and identifying appropriate uses for sites that become available, i.e. residential, leisure or employment.

• Delivering catalyst sites – town centres can contain several vacant sites or underused areas which rapidly become a barrier to progress or could be transformational if delivered in the right way at the right time. Planners are identifying these opportunities, and many shared their experience of using development briefs or masterplans to help bring them forward, often alongside bids for funding through the Local Growth Fund, Levelling Up Fund, Future High Street Fund and City Deals, etc.

• Improving public realm and active travel – planners are seeking to use Community Infrastructure Levy income, Transforming Cities Funds and direct council investment to create higher quality and better designed town centre spaces, with more opportunities for enjoying time in the town centre as well as reducing the impact of motorised traffic so that walking and cycling is more attractive.

This is not a comprehensive list, with many other examples of activity in different localities. But it does suggest some core roles that planners themselves see as important to their work and which will be critical to the future of town centres.

And in conclusion …….

Reforms like the creation of a single Use Class for all commercial, business and service uses, or the introduction of PDR for residential uses, led many to suggest that there would be less of a role for planning in town centres.

In contrast, it appears from our workshop that planning and planners are at the forefront of town centre regeneration in many areas. Rather than responding to change, local planners are working with other stakeholders and taking a lead role in determining the future shape and success of their town centre.

Overall, this was a tremendously positive session revealing some of the energy and ideas that planners are bringing to town centre regeneration. We hope to build on that in PAS as we develop our work programme in this area and will maintain our support for LPAs as they continue with their plans.

¹ see the PAS website for presentations and information from the conference

Don’t panic! You are never alone

Picture taken in ‘Young Ones’ student house in 1986 – but which one is Pilgrim Pete?

One of the joys of working in the PAS team is that I can spend my days talking to like minded Planners across the country, find out what they are up to and tell them about what others are doing well. Many Planners feel quite isolated at the moment and are reassured to know that they have the same pressures, worries and questions as others. I also come across some brilliant best practice so can get Planners to learn from each other and avoid ‘reinventing the wheel’ To save you all time here are my top 10 issues that Development Management teams are struggling with at the moment and the top 10 best ideas I have heard over the last year.

Top 10 issues (in no particular order)

1. The number of householder applications have (excuse the pun) gone through the roof and you are all struggling with the shear volume. Reasons seem to be due to the Covid effect of more home working and cost of moving.
2. Planners are in very short supply particularly experienced Planners who can manage those tricky Majors. The best case officers are being poached by the applicants!
3. Extension of times are covering up a whole multitude of sins and Heads of Planning are grappling with the need to be honest about performance versus ‘playing the game’ to avoid the threat of designation
4. Some Councils are getting themselves in a real pickle over validation and have a philosophical dilemma whether to treat it as a administrative process or a key part of providing a customer focused service
5. Desperate shortages of staff lead to desperate times and pre application normally is the area that suffers most. However when Councils stop pre applications they end up losing a vital discretionary income source and have poorer application submissions
6. Another consequence of staff shortages is for the remaining staff to stop answering emails and phone calls due to pressures of work. However this normally just ends up with more complaints and grief from councillors, agents and the public
7. There appears to be a higher expectation of Planners from the public in terms of both enforcement and determining planning applications. The world of work has changed and more people work from home so are more conscious of their local area. This means they have more time to nag the Planning Department.
8. Social media is targeting Planning Officers and councillors more and more in a negative way. People can view Planning Committees via a webcast and can more easily pick over every word uttered by decision makers and their officers.
9. The fear of challenge is leading officers to write ever more complex and long winded reports just at the time when time is at a premium. You need to be careful if you expect an appeal, legal challenge or complaint but most officer reports end up in the (virtual) back of the filing cabinet neglected and unread. Why are you spending so much time on the unread reports?
10. Some Councils get tied up in knots with their ‘Heath Robinson’ approach to IT. This sometimes results in very few people actually understanding how the IT system works and to a ‘single point of failure’ scenario. Successful Councils keep things simple and logical with a good backup of officers who understand how things work.

Now here are the Top 10 ideas (again in no particular order). I have purposely focused on the day-to-day ideas that help you run an excellent Development Management service. Others will tell you about the importance of aligning Development Management with the strategic direction of the Council, future proofing your service to respond to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, addressing national policy etc. These are, maybe, the tips that you will not always be told about by others.

1. Pair the Chair of Planning Committee up with an LGA Member Peer as a mentor. It doesn’t matter how experienced the Chair is, the best way to learn is through peer-to-peer support
2. Have a learning through experience process where you learn from every complaint, compliment, appeal decision etc whether it is positive or negative. This is a great way to learn, show that you are learning and motivate your staff by recognising when your staff do well
3. Make a pact with the Section 151 officer on raising pre application income whereby you will go over and above to drive up income only if the income can stay in Planning. This a great motivational incentive for staff to drive up income and can provide the justification for recruiting more staff.
4. Change your job descriptions and staff structures so that staff can move around the department and gain promotion without having to apply for a new job. You must keep the best staff wherever they currently sit in the organisation otherwise someone else will poach them.
5. Become best friends with your nearest RTPI accredited Planning school. Then you can find out who are the best students and entice them to work for your Planning department
6. Introduce a ’10 minute’ officer report for the simple stuff. If a householder application has no objections and is recommended for approval it will only be the case officer and signing off officer who ever reads it so why spend more than 10 mins writing it?
7. Set regular meetings with senior managers to agree your position on certain key developments and ensure you are proactively delivering the things that matter to your Council. One Council calls them ‘Cobra’ meetings – you know who you are!
8. Invest in your website to maximise self help. Put your heads together as Planners and think about all the general questions you get asked on a day-to-day basis and then put them down in a Q and A section of your Planning pages. This means you don’t have to spend time answering phone calls and emails with the same old answers.
9. Get people who know very little about Planning – your partner, your children, your next door neighbour – and test the wording of Planning Committee reports and information on your website. If they don’t understand it then you need to change the wording. Remember Planning is public facing and so the public need to understand what you are saying.
10. Send out a pack of information with the Planning Committee agenda for Members alongside the officer report that includes plans, Google Map reference and photographs. Then at Planning Committee the officer presentations can be limited to no more than 5 minutes highlighting any key points that need to be highlighted to the Committee.

So there you go. If you already follow all the top tips well done and let PAS know if you have others that we can share. If there is something new, try it out and let us know how it went.

Most importantly keep the faith and remember – you are never alone.

Do you work in a local planning authority? We need your help……please

Peers are such an important part of the work that we do. There is nothing quite like hearing from someone who has been in your position and experienced similar things. There is something quite comforting about knowing that you’re not on your own and that they have been there and come out the other side smiling. A peer visiting your Council can also become a part of your network or become a friend to lean on as you both move through your career.  

This isn’t to say that all Councils are the same, far from it. There are, however, many shared experiences and this provides our network of peers with some unique opportunities to apply their knowledge to.  Peers benefit enormously from the work that they do, and they tell us that they learn a lot from the Councils they work with. They then take this learning back to their Council where their own service improvement work continues. It should go without saying but this also helps peers to develop personally. This applies equally to Councillors and officers in a Council.

Our peers can work on Planning Peer Challenges, where a group of officers and Councillors go into a Council to provide an external perspective on their planning service, or they can work on more discreet areas giving advice on a particular issue or undertaking reviews of the different elements of a planning service such as the planning committee. The work is varied and provides as much benefit to the peer as it does to the host authority. This is the joy of sector led improvement.

Peers should have relevant and comparable experience to the authority they are supporting. Councils look for these qualities when they are choosing which peers to invite in. They should also be able to understand the demography and cultures of the communities that Councils serve. This helps to build and keep trust throughout the work. It is also more likely that the Council can get wider buy-in to the recommendations and any action plan that is created to make the improvements.

We have a great group of peers and whilst we try to use them sparingly, they do have day jobs after all, we find ourselves calling on the same people time and time again. On the upside, this means that we have a very experienced peer pool but, on the downside, it creates a capacity problem and means that we are not creating a diverse pool with opportunities for everyone. This is something that the PAS team wish to address.

We started a conversation with Helen Fadipe, Sara Dilmamode and Gavin Chinniah of the BAME Planning Network. This wasn’t just about our Peer network, but it became clear from our early conversations that this was the place to start. Helen explained to us that BAME planners working in local planning authorities do not have the same access to senior positions and would, under our current criteria, be prevented from being peers. Conversely, being a peer gives you the range of experiences that can help you to get those more senior positions.

We have been working over the summer to change our criteria so that it is more inclusive, basing our requirements around experiences rather than seniority. We hope that by doing this we can encourage a wider range of people to come forward and apply to be a PAS peer. We have also broadened the scope of the experiences that we require, recognising that it’s not only planners that do planning.

As we start to enter a period of change within the planning sector, we are starting to see an increase in the demand for peer challenges, with Councils using the peers to help them respond to changes and challenges. It’s a really interesting time to be a planning peer.

Biodiversity net gain – looking for perfection in an imperfect world?

I thought I’d write a blog to celebrate the 18th anniversary of when I started working in planning for the natural environment with English Nature in Kent. Looking back on my career, I feel we’re in a more positive place than we have ever been in terms of environmental planning, but we are also much more aware of the huge challenges we face – Monday’s IPCC report and its ‘code red for humanity’ bringing these into sharp focus. My feeling is we’ll only deal with these challenges if we take action now and learn as we go, not expecting any solution to be perfect, but taking small steps to move us forward all the time.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been running workshops for local authority officers and Councillors to inform our PAS project helping LPAs get ready for mandatory biodiversity net gain. These have generated a huge amount of useful information and input both for our project, but also to pass on to Defra and Natural England as they develop details of how the scheme will work. 

There is a lot of positivity out there about this new initiative, but also significant concern about how it’s going to work. How can overwhelmed planning departments with no ecological expertise make decisions on whether an application is compliant? How do we avoid developers gaming the system? How do we make sure this actually delivers gains? Won’t biodiversity net gain make schemes unviable?

In the meantime, there have been some articles in the press criticising biodiversity net gain, seeing it as a spreadsheet exercise or numbers game and implying that it will lead to more habitat loss and environmental destruction, plus that it is incompatible with ‘re-wilding’.

At the moment, we don’t have all the details of how mandatory biodiversity net gain will work, as the Environment Bill provisions will be accompanied by secondary legislation and guidance. However, we do know that a number of key safeguards mean it should be a significant improvement on what happens now. An important point is that biodiversity net gain does not replace any of the existing protections for sites, habitats and species in place now, nor does it replace the ‘mitigation hierarchy’ of avoid impacts first, then mitigate them and only compensate as a last resort. We also know that net gain provisions will not apply to certain irreplaceable habitats (as yet to be confirmed, but undoubtedly to include ancient woodland) and that councils will receive ‘new burdens’ funding to implement the new requirements.

Undeniably there are issues with biodiversity net gain and it won’t (and doesn’t yet) work perfectly, but we need to compare it to the currently very imperfect system where the majority of unprotected habitats (outside designated sites, like SSSIs) are lost through development and not replaced in any way, even to achieve no net loss. 

The Biodiversity Metric provides a way of calculating habitat losses and gains to enable us to try and achieve a net gain. Yes, it’s not perfect and it does simplify things, but the new Biodiversity Metric 3.0 is a huge improvement on the previous 2.0 version (despite recent media reports, which almost exclusively related to issues with the old v.2.0). 

We need a system that is workable and given the complexities of nature and ecosystems, that will always have to simplify and cannot possibly take everything into account. Also, the metric is not the be-all-and-end-all, the system around it really matters. We need strategic planning for nature and the right resources and expertise to make good policy and decisions (on biodiversity net gain, but also existing nature-related planning provisions). This Natural England blog and Tony Juniper’s introduction to the metric on YouTube (about 4 mins in) explain this eloquently. 

Thinking back to 2003 when even trying to protect an internationally designated site for nature was a battle, I no longer feel like I’m waving from the sidelines. Biodiversity net gain, along with a number of other tools and initiatives, offer us a huge opportunity to address the crises we face and create better places for people and nature. 

Yes, we need to be aware of the issues with new approaches and try to resolve them, but we also need to start giving this a go and try it out – in the end biodiversity net gain is going to be mandatory in a couple of years’ time and we’ll have no choice but to get on and do it. That way, we’ll also be able to test and improve as we go (as has happened with the metric). 

I don’t think we’ll ever have a perfect solution – nature doesn’t follow rules – but BNG is a lot better than what we have now, where the majority of development leads to outright biodiversity loss, not even no net loss. So that’s what I plan to do with this project – help LPAs get started and give biodiversity net gain a go, sharing existing good practice and showing how it can work and move us another (quite big) step forward.

Neither big nor clever

Your Local Development Scheme. A pain? A millstone? An enigma wrapped inside a tissue of lies? It doesn’t have to be any of those things. All you have to do is get a page on your website which puts the formal stages up and, usefully, any forthcoming consultations. Then, set out when you’re planning to meet them and….that’s it. Yes, really!

If you have to change it, just alter it and show how it has changed. You could even try seasons for things in later stages.

So why is it that so many authorities keep republishing 10, 20 or 30 plus pages? They lovingly describe the heartbreaking lack of progress to date, the endless consult-a-go-rounds that have happened since 2010. They highlight that wonderful period from 2011 to 2015 when you were ‘going through the representations’ before returning to a ‘further additional extra this time I know it’s for real’ preferred options (with time allowed for further modifications). There are pages and pages about documents already adopted and usually lots of legal gumph about prescribed periods and out of date regulation numbers.

So, that’s the LDS. Make it a ‘one-page web-page next-bus-style announcement using seasons not months’.

But how do you know you’re getting close to getting that assessment of time right? What lies beneath? How will you make sure you meet those milestones so that when DCLG come calling you can tell them….that everything is on track, thank you for the interest.

At PAS, we have been looking at the main reasons where slippage has occurred. Whilst there is a chance that in some cases, it would have been almost impossible to avoid, it is almost always possible to see it coming.

So, to give you every chance of planning ahead, setting and agreeing a timetable that can withstand the forces of evil that seek to derail, we have come up with….a sort of a table and a chart and some words.

It isn’t big, just like your LDS shouldn’t be, and it isn’t particularly clever, just like the person who wrote it. It’s just something for you to be able to refer to, to take a breath and just scan the horizon. Take stock of what you have, assess what you need, and understand who to involve and when.

It’s available to all our subscribers, and open for comments from you to suggest improvements. Many thanks to the people who helped us to make it by contributing their thoughts and coming along to the event.

Privatising Planning

Many people have got quite cross about the “alternative providers” bit of the Housing and Planning Bill. We’ve been doing some work getting some solid, sensible council people in the same room as  DCLG and getting some of the issues out in the open. Having heard the idea kicked around from several angles I offer here a positive, step-by-step guide to making this thing work. Kind of like a thought experiment. A bit like when you ask a vegetarian “But if you had to eat a bit of an animal, would you eat a sausage or a lamp chop ?”.

But before we start, lets set the scene. I’ve heard some people talk about this proposal as if it is like the monopoly previously held by the Royal Mail being opened up to competition. This is not a helpful analogy, because the customer in that situation is the person receiving a parcel, and only them. I think a better analogy is the liberalisation of the places where people can get married. Previously only religious places and registry offices. Now, loads of different kinds of places have a registration to carry out marriages. The bride & groom are the customer, but the State is also a participant and maintains an interest in the service being done correctly (and under cover).

Who might alternative providers be ?

Alternative providers (APs) would have to be *nuts* to try and do everything a council does. Think of the preparation that would be required to be able to offer the sheer range of applications that a council must deal with. The cost of gearing up for the rare things just makes no sense. For this to work, we have to observe Pareto and allow for AP’s to organise for doing the common things well and cheaply.

This approach would also suit SMEs and their insurers. I might specialise in shop-fronts. I have a pretty good idea of how and where to advertise for customers, and because it’s all I do I *know* how the shop-front system works. You might specialise in all applications in the Kensal Rise conservation area. Again, you know the history and the bits of the place that really matter and where there is some room for a bit of wiggle. As well as some of the characters from KRRA. And so it goes on. Her thing is trees – his is extensions. And yes, many of the people delivering these services are going to be the people currently sitting in council planning departments.

Of course, allowing APs to stake out a specialism (and drive costs down) comes at a price. Most obviously APs will not want to offer a heritage service without heritage applications attracting a fair fee. But just as plainly Councils won’t want to be left with the horrid applications that cannot be made to work financially. Each application needs a fair fee (set by the council) and if people can undercut it then good luck to them. And if the undercutting is so large that lots of work starts to disappear then councils will need to revise their fees down or accept its permanent loss.

How will it work in practice ?

For people who aren’t up close with the application process there is a hope that somehow the “processing” and “decision” bits of the whole divide neatly into chunks which can seamlessly be navigated. I’m afraid not.

It gets a bit deep for a blog post, so I’ll just lay down the three problems that need to be part of the approach. Nothing that can’t be fixed, but each requires quite a big change to the status quo.

• Consultation: Councillors particularly want to know what is going on and will not want to check two (or three, or four) places to see which applications are on the weekly list. The risk of JR when there are multiple places things may (or may not) have been publicised goes up exponentially. Somehow all the cases being consulted by providers A, B and C need to be in the same place. The provider should be invisible to consultees – it requires a single website (in the cloud) to knit it together.
• Policy: Planning decisions are strongly driven by policy.  Hitherto each planning policy team has had a captive audience in the DM colleagues, which is one reason why plans are such enormous and arcane things. But what if you worked in six boroughs ? How would you navigate and apply each council’s policy ? What’s stopping each borough setting out their approach in a common framework and spatially so it was immediately obvious how policies ‘bit’ on every site in the six boroughs? The idea is quite liberating and so far removed from current practice that it sounds quite bonkers.
• Quality: Managing for decision-making quality is at present a management process. As a standard part of staff supervision the quality of work  is coached and managed upwards, and ultimately there is a trust relationship between report-writer and decision-maker. How would a decision-maker react if their team’s reports came to them totally cold ? And anonymised so she couldn’t tell who had created which report ? In that situation you would want to have some kind of spot-check and sanction regime to manage quality, as well (perhaps) for APs to signal when something might be borderline or to ask for help. Like staff do.

And yes, insurance is part of the answer. But it can’t be all of it.

Why should anyone bother ?

If these barriers can be overcome what might happen if this thing takes off ? The APs, of course, will want to make a small profit on the work and they might be able to package the service along with others (building control) to form a nice customer-friendly little unit.

But more broadly there are other possible good outcomes from this

• Councils can compete for talent. Allowing market forces cuts both ways, and fees can be set at a level that allows councils to pay market rates for good people.
• Service offers can be made more flexible. The national system is a straight-jacket. Innovators in councils would *love* to be able to change the system to make it a better fit to local needs. Most applicants are not cost sensitive, but quality sensitive. Fewer conditions ? Quicker turnarounds ?
• Focus. Why should councils care that much what householders are doing to their kitchens ? Place-making – that is the job that should exercise councils

 

 

Getting It Together

When was the last time you sat in a room with your colleagues in Education, Highways, and Estates? Did you have the Director in the room too?

I helped run a session yesterday in Darlington. It struck me that this is something that all councils should make time to do. We hear too often about a ‘disconnect’ between the assumed priorities for different council services. This is not an issue purely for two-tier councils, although the physical separation of colleagues can make this more difficult.

But ask yourselves, is it better to be firing off emails and letters to colleagues, with a seemingly endless and often circular paper trail, or is it easier to set aside a whole day to discuss the big picture?

Darlington does not strike me as a place where relationships are difficult. The mood in the room was positive throughout. The contributions from all colleagues were insightful and asked just the right sorts of questions. As the discussion moved from the scale of housing need to potential location, all kinds of joining up was happening. There was instant feedback on potential issues, but also solutions, to many sites. You know the sort of conversation which, if in email form, would probably have taken weeks or months to have.

We then had a quick session on the key question that many people miss out on, as they chase processes. “What does success look like?” Whilst there were obviously some rather specific answers relating to each service area, it was clear there were some key themes that came up for everyone. What came out in particular was the theme of ‘making good places’. Place making, or place shaping as a term has fallen out of vogue, but if that’s not what we’re all planning to achieve, what are we planning for?

So if you do have regular get-togethers, then your plan, and the delivery of council services, is going to already be in pretty good shape. If not, what’s stopping you? If you’d like PAS to help facilitate or feed into the organisation of the day, just get in touch.