Agenda item

Report of the Divisional Director of Planning.

The Sub-Committee received a report of the Divisional Director of Planning which set out the approach to continuing service improvement in the Development Management Service and the progress on the current LEAN programme of Process Re-engineering.

An officer highlighted the following areas of the report:

·                    the LEAN review which had been launched in August 2012 and incorporated both Access Harrow and Planning was ongoing;

• a raft of measures such as improving the quality of the information available on the Council’s website, more effective reporting systems and standardisation of training and officer manuals had been successfully implemented.  The Council was collaborating with the “Red Quadrant” Service Transformation Academy on a review of the planning service.

A Member asked for details regarding the recent significant IT issues relating to the Vaughan and Marlborough Schools online consultations which had resulted in the consultation pages being removed from the council website and asked why these had been omitted from the report and how residents’ complaints relating to these were being dealt with. 

The officer responded that the remit of the report had been to focus on performance of householder applications but the above issues relating to the two consultations would be reported to a future meeting of the Sub?Committee.  The Portfolio Holder for Planning and Regeneration advised that the validation of householder planning applications process fell within the remit of Access Harrow and not the Planning section.

A Member asked whether any measures were being implemented to reduce the number of invalid planning applications and what the target for reducing these was.  The officer advised that the issue of invalid planning applications was a common problem across all local authorities and not specific to Harrow.

No target had been set for these yet, however, the following measures were being implemented to make the process more effective: 

·                    information on the Council’s website relating to householder planning applications was being simplified to make it more accessible;

·                    local validation requirements for planning applications were being reviewed and a revised local list developed following consultation with agents.

A Member, who was not a Member of the Sub-Committee, asked whether the information in the report included building control, how the processes were being documented and whether further staffing reductions in the Planning service were envisaged as part of the LEAN process.

The officer advised that the procedure, which was being re-written only applied to householder applications and not to building control.  She stated that the procedure focussed on the validation process being carried out by Access Harrow and added that she anticipated further staff reductions as part of the Medium Term Financial Strategy.

A Member asked what proportion of staff involved in the validation process were from Access Harrow and what proportion from the Planning Service.  The officer responded that she did not have the exact figure, but that the Access Harrow team dealing with Planning enquiries were multi-functioning and dealt with both validation of planning applications and other Planning related issues.  The Member requested that the exact number of staff, the level of resources available to them, and the outcomes for each team be circulated to Members of the Sub-Committee. The officer undertook to do this.

The officer advised that she was satisfied with the current level of performance, and that a new Service Level Agreement with Access Harrow was in the pipeline.

RESOLVED: That the report be noted.