Agenda item

J Doe introduced the report and said that quarter 3 was strong for performance. He said the workload was still high but marginally down on the previous quarter. There are a lot of applications coming in and this is reflected in the increase in fee revenue.

There is a slight error on paragraph 5, it should be 60% not 80% turnaround of major applications.

There is an ongoing concern with regard to appeals performance; it is a little higher than the national average.

There has been an improvement in land charges; the average turnaround has decreased from 13 days to 6.5 days.

J Doe drew members’ attention to paragraph 12 and said that this was very important for the Council to demonstrate an ongoing supply of housing land and so far 300 houses have been built and the annual target is 430.

Councillor Matthews referred to page 11 and asked if there was any indications on the effect of turnaround now that officers have been delegated the power to take enforcement action.

J Doe said he felt it was probably too early to tell but would certainly keep an eye on it.

Councillor Ashbourn said he hoped that appeals awarded against the Council would not result in the process being any less robust. He hoped that the team took the time to analyse why the appeals were awarded against and to learn from them.

J Doe said there is a review process in place in order for the team to learn from the decision. Sometimes the appeals are awarded against the Council due to the quality of the policies in place. Due to the recent high staff turnover, all reports are checked by senior officers.

Councillor C Wyatt-Lowe mentioned the review of the new Local Plan and asked if members would have any input on developing the new plan.

J Doe said a task and finish group would be set up and this has worked well in shaping policy in the past. However, it is a long process formulating a new Local Plan.

Councillor Hicks said that Tring Town clerk had contacted the planning department for clarification on some plans but had not received a response. He asked if J Doe could give an average time scale for a response.

J Doe asked Councillor Hicks to forward him the correspondence and he will look into it.

Councillor Anderson said that this is a common complaint about case officers not responding to queries. He said that case officers are extremely busy and would not get any work done if they responded to every query. Councillor Anderson encouraged the other members to advise constituents that the officers do read queries and take them into account when producing reports.

J Doe said officers make the effort to respond but performance figures are key. New government measures mean that if a local authority dips below a certain level, the Secretary of State can intervene and refer applications straight to the planning inspector and although Dacorum are nowhere near this level, the key focus is performance.

Outcome

The Strategic Planning and Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee noted the report.