Minutes:
Jane Philips attended the meeting and asked the following question:
"On a quarterly basis, local planning authorities are required to submit Forms PS1 and PS2 to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government providing a range of information about decisions taken on district matters planning applications. The information gathered on these forms is used, among other purposes, to calculate local authorities’ performance for the purposes of designating under-performing local planning authorities under section 62A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. On Form PS2, the time from application to decision begins when a valid application and the correct fee have been received and ends on the date a decision notice is despatched.
Will the Portfolio Holder for Planning please state in clear and unambiguous terms whether the data reported on the quarterly PS1 and PS2 forms submitted since May 2018 is, in fact, accurate and free from systematic errors in the reporting of data?"
Councillor Tumi Hawkins responded:
“The data we submit in forms PS1 and PS2 returns has historically been generated automatically through the Council’s “Agile” planning application software, prepared and submitted using the required standard report format. This is data that has been inputted into the system by officers throughout the planning process and is used to produce a return within MHCLG (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government) reporting timelines.
In February this year, the Planning Service migrated over 1 million records from the Agile system into a new Idox system ”shared” database. Like the Agile system, the Idox solution provides a reporting tool to support Local Planning Authorities generate and submit the PS1 and PS2 returns.
However, we have not submitted the PS1 and PS2 returns for Q4 of 2019/20 (Jan 2020 - March 2020) yet as due to the Covid-19 pandemic the government has extended the submission date to August 2020).
Officers will be taking care to ensure that the first submissions reported through this new system, and which rely upon data that was transferred from the old to the new system, represents an accurate record of the services performance.
Recognising that some 6000 applications per year pass through the system, it would be unwise for anyone to guarantee that there are no errors in the reported data. However, I am satisfied that the use of a recognised software solution and standardised reporting templates enable the Local Planning Authority to provide a consistent and accurate return to MHCLG.”
At the Leader’s invitation Jane Philips asked the following supplementary question:
“If the Council is provided with evidence indicating that systematic inaccuracies exist in the data reported to Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government on forms PS1 and/or PS2 since May 2018, will the Portfolio holder for Planning commit to commissioning an external audit to investigate any irregularities uncovered and prepare corrected data for resubmission by the Council please?”
Councillor Tumi Hawkins responded:
“Obviously, we will need to look at that and we will take appropriate action. I cannot commit to anything until I have seen whatever evidence it is that you have, but I am prepared to send my answer to you, both your original question and your follow up question, in writing.”