Issue - meetings

A Horner introduced the item and ran through the main highlights of the report.

-       The paperless transition with town and parish councils has gone well and there has been positive feedback at the bimonthly meeting with the hardware and software that has been provided.

-       There are still issues with the operation of the public website and its functionality. The department is aware of the issues concerning comments that have been submitted not appearing on the website but work is ongoing with the IT department and supplier to resolve this.

-       Members were assured that all documents were being received and officers have all the information available to them to take into account when making their decision. The function issue on the website is only affecting the public.

-       There has been a change to the scheme of delegation and the Development Management Committee has changed from a three week cycle to monthly. This change seems to be working well despite initial timing issues – these have been resolved through better agenda management and reordering the agenda prior to the meeting to allow all applications with speakers to go first.

-       Planning performance agreements have been introduced which allows for greater interaction with applicants and has increased income. This has helped to manage the overall processing of applications and if it is believed that the application may take longer than the statutory time, then officers agree a more realistic timetable with the applicants. This also protects the council from having to refund planning fees if the decision hasn’t been made in the time stated.

-       There is a positive trend in fee income. The government released a white paper which could potentially allow local authorities to increase their planning fees by 20%, this legislation should be before parliament very soon and hope it will be in place by the end of the financial year.

-       There has been a steady and sustained increase in planning applications – we are expecting the LA3 application to be submitted before Christmas which is expected to be 1100 homes and schools. This one of the biggest applications that Dacorum has ever dealt with and requires a large number of resources. A case officer can generally deal with about 30-40 small applications at one time, but officers dealing with major applications only have about 2-3 cases. The LA3 application has meant working with 3^rd parties such as HCC and the CCG.

-       The Brownfield Land Register is currently in production which will identify sites for development. Some of these sites will be given permission in principle which gives the department a different method to authorise development.

-       The department is working with IT to find a replacement for Acolaid which will be a big project. It is an important opportunity to learn lessons from the previous system, look at how to improve efficiencies and have a better public interface. This process will take several months and currently soft market testing is underway to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 122