Agenda item

The Chief Executive was asked by the Council’s Scrutiny Committee to investigate the efficacy and effectiveness of the Planning Service, with particular reference to the way enforcement is carried out and how members are engaged with the work of the council in this service area.

The Committee had before it a report * from the Chief Executive regarding the Planning and Enforcement Service.

At a previous meeting of the Committee the Chief Executive had been asked to investigate the efficacy and effectiveness of the Planning Service, with particular reference to the way enforcement was carried out and how members were engaged with the work of the council in this service area.

The Chief Executive outlined the contents of the report which gave context to the current situation, flagged the importance of keeping Members informed and provided recommendations to enable future improvements.

Discussion took place regarding:

·         Income generation and whether it could be possible provide a service to others;

·         Breaches that required investigation;

·         Whether or not all breaches were real or perceived and public expectation;

·         Triage of breaches;

·         Whether Planning Officers should undertake enforcement duties or whether it was best served as a separate role;

·         Whether Planning Enforcement Officers should work in geographic areas or on a unitary basis;

·         The extra work that would be generated to provide regular updates to Members and how it was hoped that this could be an automatic report from the IT systems;

·         An additional post in the Legal Team was currently being advertised and it was intended that a Planning Solicitor be appointed;

·         The Audit Team had added an internal audit to their programme;

·         Methods of updating the public and town and parish councils;

It was RECOMMENDED to Cabinet that the following be noted:

a)    The Head of Planning & Regeneration bring forward the Local Enforcement Plan for Cabinet to consider as a matter of priority to set the framework for enforcement activity at MDDC.

b)    The Head of Planning & Regeneration ensures that staff within the enforcement service are invested in through additional training to help provide them with the necessary confidence about sharing information with members (with reference to Data Protection Act constraints).

c)    The Head of Planning & Regeneration take steps to appoint additional resource specifically into the enforcement team to clear any real or perceived backlog, and that consideration be given to the merits of operating this service as a discrete entity to share knowledge, expertise and resource (as opposed to the current area-based model).

d)    The Head of Planning & Regeneration ensures that ‘Part II’ reports were only ever brought as an exception in order to maintain transparency as far as Data Protection rules allow.

e)    The Chief Executive, in conjunction with the Head of Planning & Regeneration and the Head of Communities & Governance, consider setting a target for the processing and completion of S106 agreements.

f)     The Head of Communities & Governance considers reviewing (in conjunction with the Head of Planning & Regeneration) whether the current legal expertise available in-house was appropriate to process planning matters swiftly, and to take steps to re-provision this as opportunity permits.

g)    The Cabinet Member for Planning & Regeneration considers a report investigating the introduction of S106 Monitoring Fees in order to adequately resource the level of required activity.

h)   The Chief Executive considers the value of instructing Internal Audit to look at this area before the end of 2016/17 in order to explore further opportunities for service improvement and efficiency.

i)     That local performance indicators for the enforcement service were set and were reported quarterly to the Planning Committee.

j)      That Members were provided with a suite of reports on planning enforcement cases on a monthly basis, and were reported to Planning Committee quarterly.

k)    That the Planning Committee considers the level of delegation that exists in relation to enforcement activity.

l)     Officers investigate the possibility of finding a way of updating residents and town/parish councils in relation to complaints regarding enforcement and report back to this Committee within 4 months.

(Proposed by Cllr Mrs J Roach and seconded by Cllr F J Rosamond)

Note: - Report previously circulated and attached to Minutes.