Agenda item

The Planning Portfolio Holder and Joint Director for Planning and Economic Development presented the report which updated the committee on performance and ongoing service improvements within the Development Management Service.

The Portfolio Holder expressed concern regarding the under delivery of homes. The Council needed to ensure that sites were coming on stream and that homes on those sites were being delivered. The committee was informed that delivery was slowing on some larger sites, such as Northstowe.

The committee was informed that:

·         The Development Management Service’s performance was strong and Government targets were still being met.

·         In relation to designation, if all five year land supply issues were discounted, the service was within the Government guidelines regarding designation. The Council was awaiting further communication regarding designation. The Joint Director advised the committee that there was no practical purpose to the service being designated as performance was not an issue, as demonstrated by its improvement which was continuing.

·         The 10 day target for land searches was being met.

·         The number of compliments regarding the service had risen, which reflected the improvement in the service.

·         The first of the Planning roadshows had received very low turnout from members of the public, which had been disappointing for officers.

·         Staff were due to be TUPE transferred to the Planning Shared Service on 1^st April 2018.

·         In relation to the number of planning applications received, the committee was informed that discharge of conditions were also logged and there was just one sequential numbering system.

·         Planning applications were still being submitted without adequate information. These were being sent straight back. The committee was informed that these were sometimes coming from the same agent.

·         The Planning service was now contacting residents whose applications had not been validated due to the insufficiency of the application submitted by their agent. The Council held a list of recommended agents.

·         In response to an example given of an application having been validated, going to consultation and then being invalidated without the agent being informed, the Joint Director explained that this may have occurred if it became apparent following consultation for example, that a tree assessment was needed. The Joint Director could not comment on the individual case cited but would be happy to look into it. He advised members that officers could only determine that everything that was needed had been submitted with the application, after the site had been visited. If anything was missing then there would be no other option than to invalidate the application.

·         The Joint Director explained that there was an issue with the way the Planning Portal worked, as the finance and payments system could not keep up with the validations performance. Ways of improving this were being looked at.

·         A Government project had been launched to look at the issue of low housing delivery. This was looking at tools that could be applied to developers who did not build after permission had been granted. A major challenge for the Council was getting houses built where permission had been granted. Where permissions were granted, the Council was trying to apply conditions to ensure housing was delivered in a timely way. The committee was informed that Mid-Bedfordshire had been trying to impose conditions to aid delivery. The Joint Director advised that there was a risk to imposing conditions for delivery, which had implications regarding the risk to lenders financing projects.

·         In response to the concerns raised regarding low housing delivery, the local member for Cambourne pointed out that other things were dependent on the delivery of homes on major sites, such as schools and transport infrastructure.

·         In response to a concern raised, the committee was informed that further primary schools in Cambourne West would not be built until capacity had been exhausted in existing primary schools.

·         Regarding performance, the committee was informed that this had improved in December 2017 despite staff absence and an increase in applications. The service was still working on improving customer satisfaction.

The committee noted the update and requested a further update in six months time.