Transparency data

Board meeting minutes 24 March 2022 - The Planning Inspectorate

Updated 17 September 2024

Applies to England

Minutes FINAL 19 May 2022

Title of meeting	Planning Inspectorate Board Meetings
Date	24 March 2022
Venue	Gromit, 3rd floor, Temple Quay House/Virtual
Chair	Stephen Tetlow

Present	Planning Inspectorate Board Meeting
Trudi Elliottt (TE)	Non-Executive Director
Rebecca Driver (RD)	Non-Executive Director
Sally Dixon (SD)	Non-Executive Director
Sarah Richards (SR)	Chief Executive
Navees Rahman (NR)	Director, Corporate Services
Graham Stallwood (GS)	Director, Operations
Simon Gallagher (SG)	Director, Planning (DLUHC)

In attendance

Strategy & Corporate Governance Lead (KT)

Head of Strategy & Change (SC)

Governance Administrative Officer (DP)

Professional Lead (PL) (item 5)

Senior Modelling Analyst (GB) (item 5)

Change Portfolio Project Manager (AC) (item 5)

Operations Lead – Environmental Services (RH) (item 5)

Head of Data & Performance (RG) (item 6)

Change Portfolio Lead (TJ) (item 7)

Head of Human Resources (SL) (item 8)

Apologies	Planning Inspectorate Board Meeting
Christine Thorby (CT)	Director, Strategy

1. Welcome and Declaration of Interests

1.1 The chair called for Declarations of Interest, of which there were none.

2. Minutes of January Board meeting and corporate action tracker

2.1 No further comments were raised on the January Board minutes.

2.2 The following changes were made to the action tracker:

• Action 3 – in progress, completion date extended to 9th June (HS&W Strategic Assurance Panel).

• Action 4 – vacancy data to be circulated to the NEDs out of committee then the action can be closed.

• Action 7 – discussion to be held in April (date to be confirmed).

• Action 9 – completion date to be updated out of committee.

• Action 17 – in progress and will be incorporated into future digital resourcing panel.

• Actions 5, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15 and 19 to be closed.

Agreed:***

2a) The minutes from the January Board meeting are an accurate record of the meeting subject to addressing a typo.

3. Strategic Assurance Panel meeting updates for the Board:

3.1 Innovation Project

• Good discussion held, with emerging ideas to be disseminated into practical outcomes.

3.2 Staff Engagement Survey

• Maintaining staff engagement was positive but the Inspectorate could still aspire even higher.

3.3 Innovation Business Model workshop

• FOMfE panel was postponed due to an illness, the NEDs participated in an Innovation workshop in its place.

• External influences on the Inspectorate were discussed including water and climate change.

• Innovation findings will be set against the strategic plan to determine any gaps and matched into the strategic priorities.

• New horizon scanning position has been filled for 12 months, which will further build this knowledge.

** Agreed:**

3a) CH (Innovation Lead) will summarise findings from the session and return these to Executive Team (ET) and then to the Board.

3b) DLUHC to receive this innovation work once endorsed by the Board. SG agrees it unwise to unravel the Strategic Plan.

4. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities update

4.1. SG provided the departmental update:

• DLUHC has published the Levelling Up White Paper and is now utilising this lens. Connection with the Innovation piece is vital.

• New Director General to start next week, and restructuring which will combine housing, planning and regeneration.

• DLUHC has visibility of the high profile of Local Plans arising from the Inspectorate but are aware of the associated complexities.

• Large infrastructure and new energy demands are rising; therefore, number of projects will likely increase. DLUHC and the Inspectorate will need to work collaboratively to ensure resources are correctly linked and utilised.

• Two areas of focus around the legislative change: environmental regulations and the de regulation of procedural regulations whilst stress testing that the process does work faster.

• Draft of priorities letter sent to SR and the following areas were flagged: Operational Performance, ODT, Local Plans, NSIP’s, gender pay gap and finance management.

4.2 TE questioned what the implications are to the Inspectorate’s resources due to the current gap between desirable and realistic resources throughout the whole planning system. The Board needs assurance that DLUHC is aware that unless these demands are removed, the resulting planning system will not be able to be resourced. NEDs are also concerned about the division of centralised resources across the planning system.

4.3 As assurance SG firstly informed that a Capacity and Capability task and finish group with Industry and Local Government has been launched. Secondly that mapping is underway to understand the impact and to distinguish between unit costs and volume effects. The aim of a correctly resourced plan requires a transition period.

4.4 The following points were raised around unit costs and resourcing:

• DLUHC have undertaken a variety of workstreams to reduce the unit costs, but further work is required before a causal relationship can be determined. Reduction of average unit costs will remain diverse across different areas because of varied political input.

• TE believes getting the DC and Housing Policies right are the best area to save resource but recognises the accompanying challenges.

• Finding the correct people is the primary restraint of resourcing, rather than the budget.

• Pay implications not often found to be the issue with recruiting or retention.

• The Inspectorate is utilising Apprenticeships and Appeal Planning Officers (APOs) to increase intake and are experimenting with recruitment to broaden the people being bought into the system.

Agreed:

4a)  SR to share the draft priorities letter with the Board for reflection before finalisation.

4b)  SG to introduce SR and TE to new members of DLUHC.

5. Planning Reform & Project Speed update – (OFFICIAL SENSITIVE)

5.1 OFFICIAL SENSITIVE item captured as part two minutes.

6. Performance Dashboard, including Operational Performance

6.1 Received, open and closed cases

• Monitoring change in pattern of mix of casework.

• More cases closed (1,894) than opened (1,705) for first time since December 2020.

• Closed more inquires (68) than received (37), hearings levelling out, closed more written representations (1,755) than received (1,611).

6.2 Timeliness of casework

• Median time of 25 weeks, with more complex cases pushing variability up.

• Longer time frames seen from 2018 onwards is assumed to be the result of performance recovery, therefore the Inspectorate is unlikely to return to the shorter timeframes of 2017.

• Open cases are likely to increase next month due to legacy offline cases being input on Horizon. Removal of legacy systems (Chart/ISS) will produce one centralised source for casework data.

• GS reassured that the Inspectorates’ actions in response to the pandemic are now producing results similar to pre-pandemic, although remain subject to external influences.

6.3 Local plans

• Reduction of local plan examinations by 14 in the last 12 months, which is expected to be impacted by changes to Planning Reform.

6.4 Stage performance

• Received to valid

** 60-70% of cases took less than a week.

** Increase in proportion of cases (1 in 4) which are older than 4 weeks, expected to improve as the Digital Strategy develops.

*Valid to start

** Median of 7 weeks.

** 22% cases have been 16+ weeks.

** Enforcement and written representations are initiating quicker.

** Commissioned standards are used to capture data.

** SD questioned whether elements of local plans could be approved sooner to enable the casework to continue.

*Start to event

** 20% are over 16 weeks.

• Event to decision

** 50-70% in 3 weeks.

6.5 Recovery

• Time remaining in the system is rising but the number of older cases is reducing, with a mixture of old and new cases being completed.

6.6  Inspectors are revisiting sites due to nutrients found in water supplies affecting 74 LPAs. This will impact our Operational Performance and ‘in flight’ local planning examinations.

Agreed:

6a)  Embed lessons learnt with recruitment and performance recovery to prevent repetition of increased time frames for cases.

6b)  Geographically map appeals casework and investigate the impact of having plans in place, in addition to the capability of catchments.

7. Change Portfolio

7.1  The following updates were provided on the current Change Portfolio:

• currently more projects in progress than before but they have still been delivered,

• introduction of Change Portfolio Progress Group (CPPG) and the engagement of Heads of Service (HoS) with decision making is showing positive changes,

• portfolio reacted to all requests whilst remaining very close to the financial budget,

and next steps:

• collaboration with CPPG and the business planning process to calculate achievability and maturity of projects,

• a move towards portfolio management which involves a definition phase of the proposed changes, categorisation, prioritisation changes, ensuring balance and the planning phase.

7.2 The following points were discussed:

• The portfolio is iterative and will be reviewed monthly by CPPG, facilitating any required reprioritisation from new projects/changes and in accordance with the financial budget and Strategic Plan.

• All projects were required to review the scope and budget profiles and highlight any non-essential elements in which budget could potentially be pulled to protect the essential items. Identification of when budget is needed and the confidence of this has taken place to reduce the risk of overspend.

• Approximately a third of the budget is benchmarked for the ‘Confirmed and Committed’ budget and contains projects such as the Corporate Systems project, Future Ways of Working (FWoW), Health Safety & Wellbeing (HS&W) and non-capitalised areas of ODT.

• To manage the scale of the change portfolio, ‘In Flight’ projects and new projects completed mandates. Prioritisation was given to those which were strategic risk mitigations, those required for compliance reasons and those which provided improvements to customer service or were contractual. Projects which needed to be done but are awaiting resources are categorised as ‘In the Wings’ with outcomes and benefits being considered.

• Prioritisation also determined which projects are not going ahead yet or which could be linked together to save resources in the future.

• Most projects within the Change Portfolio are revenue excluding digital, and 20% of overprogramming is revenue.

• Interlinkages between projects are being developed but are still immature.

• Assurance for the Change Portfolio involves a prioritisation process, set out by ET and completed by HoS with a focus on compliance and strategic risk mitigations. ET will review this process in the next couple of months.

• As a result of lessons learnt, to avoid overload an interim assurance group will be set up to scrutinise projects and determine outcomes before progression to the Change Portfolio or ET.

Actions:

7a) NP to add Change Portfolio to the Board forward look for later this year.

8. Health, Safety & Wellbeing

8.1 NR and SL provided the following summary:

• There has been progress in all major risk areas of HS&W: Lone working, Risk assessment, Stress and Display Screen Equipment.

• 90% compliance is an encouraging step towards the Inspectorate’s aspirations of long-term cultural change.

• Mental health training has been delivered and supply issues have been addressed which have held us back around DSI systems and Orbis.

• Current focus is on maintaining resources, changing contracts, and educating the Project Board with the HS&W plan.

• There is concern over the reliance on the HS&W manager, therefore support from other colleagues is instrumental in utilising their time and expertise.

• Momentum is building with 335 people attending the Suzy Lamplugh Trust sessions and over 100 people volunteering for MIND training for managers.

8.2 The following points were raised during discussion:

• There are three areas of Governance; the visibility that ET has on HS&W after quarterly HS&W committee meetings; the HS&W committee as a sub-committee of Whitley; and the Project Board’s assurance of project plan delivery.

• The Inspectorate is compliant with HS&W regulations but requires improvement to Orbis to reach the desired level. However, a challenge remains in determining the completion deadline.

• The ability to resource currently has a red RAG rating on the risk register due to the reliance on one individual. Two additional posts now support this individual but encouraging retention is instrumental. The NEDs feel this RAG rating should be amber as the current resource is substantial and the issue only escalates if there are staffing changes.

• RD questioned whether this HS&W knowledge is known practise within the Inspectorate. SL reassures that the organisation has another qualified individual and that the current HS&W manager is disseminating their expertise. Furthermore, a comprehensive understanding of the project plan by all Project Board members builds resilience. The Inspectorate’s aim of a cultural shift and dissemination of knowledge further reduces reliance on one individual.

8.3 Health, Safety & Wellbeing will return at ARAC in the autumn and at a Strategic Assurance Panel in June.

Actions:

8a)  NR to change the RAG rating for ability to resource HS&W to amber.

8b)  To ensure the HS&W process is accurately reflected in the risk register, including mitigations and progress.

9. Forward agenda and AOB

Agreed:

9a)  The forward agenda for the May Board meeting.

Actions:

9b) NP to discuss offline the frequency of in person Board meeting, with aspiration to hold a Board meeting at DLUHC to network.

9c)  SG to invite the Chief Planning Officer (CPO) to the meeting with the NEDs, SR, and new members of DLUHC. Furthermore, offer the CPO the Inspectorate Board dates for a potential in person meeting.

9d)  NP to ensure ODT returns in Board in May.

9e)  NP to reschedule ET performance review & succession planning.

9f)  NP to add risk appetite review to the forward look for a Board or Strategic Assurance Panel session to accompany the annual risk register review at ARAC.

9g)  NP to include recruitment in the digital space at a future panel.

10. Executive Team performance review & succession planning

10.1 This item was postponed due to Covid-19 implications.

11. Business Plan (to note)

11.1 Staff changes have created capacity issues around the delivery of the Business Plan. KT reassured that appropriate actions have been made to utilise current resources alongside conducting a job analysis of a vacant role to prioritise business planning.

11.2 Directors were asked to ensure their directorates deliver to deadlines to spare the resource of the Corporate Governance team.

Next meeting:**19 May 2022