Coronavirus and innovation

Historic England Planning Bulletin May 2020

2020-05-22T10:55:12Z

I'd like to share the may 2020 edition of Historic England's Planning Bulletin, which includes notes o ntemporary measures stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic

https://historicengland.org.uk/content/docs/planning/planning-bulletin-may20/

Accepting video as part of a plg application or rep

2020-05-12T08:13:37Z

Apologies if this has already been asked but is any authority accepting video's of sites to address the lack of site visits or in a similar vein videos as reps. if so what system is being used to facilitate the uploading of the video which are probably large and has any other issues of importance been identified such as GDPR.

Other helpful resources - site notices and publicising applications

2020-04-16T08:03:51Z

Interesting piece from Kings Chambers excerpt from conclusion:

In conclusion, the authors of this Article see no insurmountable barriers to the determination of applications on the basis of the publicity requirements of the legislation in during the coronavirus outbreak. For most types of applications, alternatives exist to publicising the application by way of site notice, but in any case, the authors do not consider that the restrictions on movement in the Coronavirus Regulations restrict LPA Officers from posting site notices in fulfilment of their legal obligations.

RE: Dealing with paper applications

2020-04-14T13:38:02Z

Hi Amanda, thanks for the reply and info. It's not easy is it, good luck with it all.

Emma

RE: Dealing with paper applications

2020-04-14T13:00:58Z

Hi Amanda, our mail room are also scanning letters and new applications which has been a great help. Amanda, what are you doing about site notices and site visits? Are you taking a similar approach as Chris?

Keep well!

Emma

Decision tree for making decisions during coronavirus

2020-04-07T14:21:21Z

Thanks to the lovely people of Cornwall planning department,here is a decision tree [I love a decision tree] for choosing what happens to planning applications. I like the reminder that we need increased flexibility (I heard someone call it delegation+) but that it all gets written down properly.

No decisions in smoky rooms, even if it is just about which channel an application goes down.

RE: Housing monitoring and forecasting

2020-04-06T07:29:30Z

On the edge of their seats no doubt!

RE: Housing monitoring and forecasting

2020-04-06T07:21:37Z

Thanks Beth and Steve of these contributions. The very fact that site visits are the only way of having complete confidence in what is happening on the ground says a lot about what we already know are massive gaps in the local council’s/sector’s ability to record, collate and analyse data with any confidence. Our FAQ basically says: ‘look to your colleagues in CTax, building control, bin registrations etc. The physical inspection I agree could be done safely in some circumstances but it probably doesn’t sit well with the ‘essential visits’ / ‘stay at home’ advice, but your council may be comfortable with some approach e.g. a 'drive-by' - however manylarge sites will be inaccessible. The whole deferring for a year thing opens up other issues as pointed out. I guess you could collate whatever info you can via other means so you are not sitting still, but if the only way you gain ultimate confidence is by a SV then you’ll have to balance doing this work in stages (i.e. collate what you can now, SVs at a later date) with doing it all at once at a later date.

Housing monitoring and forecasting

2020-04-06T10:37:52Z

Hi all

I am currently mid way through our annual housing monitoring (which under normal working conditions uses site visits and on-site discussions as a primary source of information). I know that many people will have a view on carrying out site visits - it's time consuming; use BC records etc etc; but after 15 years of doing this work, this has proven to be the most reliable and the most effective method, particularly when every single completion, and every single new dwelling forecast is scrutinised and debated at planning appeals. However, we have now had to stop carrying out our site visits and I would like some advice / information please on how other Local Authorities are collecting housing completion data and also how intelligence to inform forecasting is collected. We will of course submit completions data (in some form) for the HFR and the HDT.

In addition, with regards to forecasting, we are considering an additional 1 year (12 month) lag time i.e not forecasting any completions for the 2020-2021 period in order to take account of the impacts of Covid-19 on the development industry and a cautious assumption that house building will restart in 2021. Has anyone else considered how they will incorporate / account for these impacts?

Kind regards

Beth

Other helpful resources - 50 Shades of Planning Podcast 28th Mch 2020

2020-03-31T09:15:41Z

PAS's very own Anna Rose discusses the impact of Coronavirus on the planning system with 50 Shades' Sam Stafford, Jonathan Easton (Barrister at Kings Chambers) and Stefan Webb (Place Director at FutureGov).

Other helpful resources - Simonicity 2

2020-03-30T21:20:22Z

This is a useful record/update of where things have got to with committees.

https://simonicity.com/2020/03/28/keeping-calm-carrying-on-planning-committee-meetings/

Other helpful sources - Mike Kiely on planning committees

2020-03-26T10:49:42Z

Mike Kiely (chair of POS) put together this short note on planning committees:

PLANNING COMMITTEES AND COVID-19

With the current COVID-19 restrictions, planning committees have been cancelled. This position is likely to persist for some time so not determining those applications until the pandemic is over is not really an option. Holding committees remotely is currently unlawful but MHCLG have undertaken to legislate to facilitate this. Whilst we are waiting for this it’s worth thinking about the practicalities of how a conference-call or video-link type committee might work. It is also important to remember that the officers we will have at our disposal to administer any new committee arrangements will reduce (possibly dramatically) so we need to be realistic about what new processes we can put in place; they need to be as efficient as possible.

We need to look at the practicalities of this from three different aspects:

The meeting itself
Public speaking
Public attendance

Authorising the arrangements for any changes that are made to committee procedures should be capable of decision by the Chief Executive via the emergency provisions that are in most Constitutions.

The meeting itself

Having a conference-call or video-link meeting is relatively easy to organise. The challenge is managing a very large group of people. With probably 15 to 20 members and officers in attendance with your current arrangements, it may be worth considering reducing the size of the committee to make it more manageable. Officer attendance should be kept to a minimum. The number of members should also be reduced to the minimum necessary to maintain political balance. This is required to enable the chair to manage the meeting more effectively.

As the meeting will probably be listened to and not viewed by the public (especially if it’s a conference call) it will be important to have clear protocols so that people don’t speak over each other and that people introduce themselves, so listeners know what is happening. The role of the chair will be even more important than usual.

Arrangements will be necessary for handling visual material, but this should be relatively straightforward. They can be distributed in advance as PowerPoint or PDF packs and referred to in the meeting. Some video conferencing facilities will enable them to be displayed during the virtual meeting but you must be sure all participants can do so – a simpler solution may be more resilient.

Public speaking

Allowing any public speakers to join a virtual meeting is likely to challenge the technology. An alternative solution would be to ask the speakers to record their speech (as an MP3 file) and email it to officers in advance of the meeting. This is likely to be better for most people as they can have several attempts at it until they are happy it is right – and under the normal time limit. The only potential downside is there would be no ability to ask questions, but that should rarely be necessary. You could make arrangements for speakers to supply their phone numbers and to be on standby so that any really necessary questions could be done through a phone call.

Public attendance

It is important to remember that it is a meeting in public and not a public meeting. The public are there to listen and that is all. Cheering, booing, clapping and other forms of “participation” are all against the rules and shouldn’t really happen anyway! Accordingly, the public are in effect witnesses to the process. Involving them “live” in a virtual meeting would be impracticable if not impossible. If a live webcast can be facilitated then fine, but as an alternative a recording could be made of the virtual meeting which is then uploaded ASAP to the Council’s website. Such an approach should cover this element of the process adequately and not prejudice any party.

Conclusions

It is hoped that these notes assist in making decisions around these issues. It is essential to design new procedures that are as simple as possible and do not rely on complex technology arrangements. Broadband capacity is already under strain, so telephony may be more resilient. It is also important to remember that the human resources we have to service new arrangements will diminish and possibly do so significantly.

Dealing with paper applications

2020-03-26T09:35:15Z

Hi - has anyone decided to refuse to accept paper applications being submitted? We don't get many now but we're having to deploy staff to the office to collect and scan. I'd like to stop accepting them but I don't think regs allow for this at the moment.

Other helpful sources - FTB and virtual planning meetings

2020-03-25T13:22:31Z

A quick summary of the relevant part of the Covid Bill

https://www.ftbchambers.co.uk/articles/virtual-local-authority-meetings-coronavirus-bill-amended-ruling-out-uncertainty

Other helpful sources - Simonicity

2020-03-25T13:22:22Z

Simon Ricketts has an excellent blog with a post summarising some of the issues at play delivering services remotely

https://simonicity.com/2020/03/21/what-to-do/

These things might age quite quickly - note this is 21st March

New forum - coronavirus and innovation

2020-03-25T11:49:33Z

Two things to begin with:

- we have started a FAQ on our main website which we will keep up-to-date

- if you haven't used KHub before you should think about setting notifications. You can get a daily or weekly digest.

Please feel free to ask anything you like - it is good to compare notes with people.

The coronavirus is going to radically change how we do planning, and accelerate innovation almost overnight.