Centralising the Planning Administration Function - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

Hi Martin I used to run a centralised admin team which covered planning, building control, planning policy and environmental health. I found that the specific knowledge requirements of each of these areas as well as the need to be able to provide a decent level of technical back up to Officers and decent advice to customers led us back down the route of specific admin roles and functions for each department. It would make a difference if the level of admin support was pretty basic and generic but most people do that sort of work on their own these days. If the admin team is expected to take phone calls for the department they need to either have, or be close enough to, the answer to provide the customer/client/service user (insert suitably PC alternative!!) with a quality response otherwise if will be perceived as a barrier between the service and its users. Regards Ian Reekie MId Suffolk District Council Planning Services

I think many authorities will have gone down the road of transferring certain parts of the planning administration or support function over to a customer services delivery channel over recent years. Whilst this probably does not deal with the entirety of the planning support role it can represent a good chunk - dealing with queries, receiving applications, etc. I think the issues raised by Ian are pertinent to this type of change and, potentially, other types of transfer of the admin role. These would include:- - the importance of specialist knowledge to undertaking the role - shared infrastructure – be that a physical location for customer contact or filing, IT system, hardware facilities – scanners and so on. - relationship with professional staff – will this be strengthened or weakened, is this important? For example there may be a strong relationship between a DC Support Team and professional officers, will that be lost? Are there implications for career progression?

Martin We have just completed a formal consultation on restructuring our Environment & Planning services. This has been off the back of the authority's Customer Access Strategy (CAS), which has included setting up a Customer Service Centre, closing 5-6 reception points, transferring "customer activities" into the centre and deploying new technologies. This has also resulted in a reduction of staff through BPR of activities, new technologies (EDRMS etc) and the need to payback the investment in the CAS, once this has been achieved significant ongoing savings for the council will be realised. We are bringing together adminstrative/business support functions from DC, BC, Trees,into a new Application Support Team team, with the CSC providing the face to face, telephone, email front line service for planning. This new team is still within the E&P department but under new management arrangements and not directly managed by the planning service. The lead manager is a Business/ICT Specialist. The Application Support Team is one of three teams in the centralised support others being Business Resources (Finance, H&S, Local HR and general admin) and Information Services (GIS, LLPG, Specialist Systems admin/ICT Support for departmental systems e.g Planning Database (UNI-Form) and Environmental Health (M3). Our new structure will be in place from 6 April. We are aware that it is a radical approach from the norm. Maintaining small dedicated admin teams gong forward for us is not sustainable and the requirement to continually reduce our operational costs. At the same of all this, we are reducing our planning workforce as part of the investment in the CSC and new technologies. Going forward we will need to a) Build upon current specialist skills and developing this to ensure resilience of knowledge and cover. b) Use the right officer with the right skills for the right task c) Overcome perceived concerns that BC/DC Managers will not be involved operationally in decisions and that the strong relationships that have been built up between business support and professional officer are not going to be undermined. If you want any further information/thoughts please email me paul.boucher@cambridge.gov.uk Paul

We at Stroud have centralised admin into a Building Control / Planning function. I worry about loosing expertize and the over use of "admin" to discribe a technical role could be dangerous. We tried a common customer service centre, but withdrew once we noted that the quality of advice was "patchy" to say the least. We operate a philosophy based on the work of John Seddon, and particulary reducing failure demand. John's work on the Toyota system has many benefits which transend cost savings. He showed that by opening call centres all you did was increase the number of calls, as the advice given was inaccurate, missdirected and largely a waste of time. What the customer wants is to talk to someone who can give them an answer there and then, not someone who works to a script, cannot give a decision based on the diversity of the caller and their issue. This translates to the technical support team. They need specialist knowledge as to what makes a valid application, fees, use of certificates etc. Combining these staff with say revs and bens dilutes that expertise and degrades BOTH services. With Building Control, the process is linear and joint applications are common, the client group is the same, and in our case the back office system is the same. Such combinations make sence. Corporate typing pools is a retrograde system and I for one would resist it, from a professional, financial and customer basis. Sorry Phill

Here at Bromsgrove we have gone from a central admin team, to a joint BC/DC team then to dedicated admin functions for DC, BC and Env. Health functions. The key is what you want to achieve, cost savings or customer service. If it's cost savings then centralise, if it's customer service polarise. Within most processes you can affect cost, quality or time. If your lucky you may get two out of three options but never all three. There's no doubt that working closely with a team builds a rapport whilst being a stand alone function makes silo's and reduces co-operation/ understanding.

Have the other respondents not actually missed the core question about the admin function being centralised as opposed to the customer facing aspects of the service? I think I would have to argue that 'generic' admin staff are far less efficient or integrated when it comes to supporting the functions of the specialist officers. the admin team make sure documents get correctly processed and all required actions are timely and they remove much of the time consuming routine admin burden from the planning officers who are always in short supply. Centralisation can mean ending up in a queue for such support and could lead to officers becoming frustrated and deciding to DIY things. This in turn actually leads to a reduction in dept performance, which is what centralising was supposed to be improving in the first was it not? It almost smacks of the days of typing pools, where the staff didn't really need to know what they were typing, just the correct format for doing it! Customer Services staff are a different issue completely and we made the mistake of thinking we could simply transfer the planning service advisor role to the newly formed team and that they would get the whole team up to speed - wrong - it just ended up with planning officers being dragged out of the dept and down to the customer service dept!

Slightly different query, but does anyone know of any authorities where the forward planning/planning policy function is in a seperate part (e.g. seperate department) of the council to development management? Thanks Harriet

Yes - Winchester City Council is set up in exactly that manner, following a re-structure about 4 years ago. The Strategic Planning department is part of the Policy Group, whilst Planning Management is part of the Operations Group. I can supply you with a Management Structure diagram if that helps? Please email me at ppenfold@winchester.gov.uk.

Yes, here in Cheltenham DC/DM is within the Built Environment Directorate and Strategic Land Use (policy) is within the Policy & Performance Directorate

At Fareham Borough Council, the planning policy section is under the Planning & Transportation service, whilst the Development Management section is under Public Services.

Hi Martin, Recently did some interim management work with a London Borough where 'admin' work between planning and dc was centralised. It was widely regarded as a disaster (except by the director who implemented it). The problem was the admin team was responsible to no-one and it was impossible to get them to do anything (as ever matrix management doesnt work). Hence planner productivity fell considerably as they had to spend a good part of every day doing routine admin work. Certainly not a good use of expensive time. Critically no planning manager could implement business process improvements in an integrated manner. Spoke to a former POS chair - Steve Clark - who said every local authority who had done the same had the same problems and after a year or so abandoned it.

We have very a very knowledgeable Planning admin team who do admin for Planning and Planning Policy, trees, enforcement and heritage. Should their 'admin' time be 199 or split between 299, 399, 499, do we think?

HI Medway Council are in the process of implementing this. Our planning validation team is likely to sit within Customer Contact separate to the specialist service (planning). We have raised concerns with regards to this but as it's a corporate initiative which will be implemented in December 2011 happy to discuss further if you want to contact me.

I will ask again and would really appreciate a response, as am hoping to complete teh costs spradheet today: We have very a very knowledgeable Planning admin team who do admin for Planning and Planning Policy, trees, enforcement and heritage. Should their 'admin' time be 199 or split between 299, 399, 499, do we think? Of course, the vast majority of your work is for DM. Thanks

@Jane - wrong forum. I've answered your Q there.