Transparency data

Board meeting minutes 20 January 2022 - The Planning Inspectorate

Updated 17 April 2024

Applies to England

Title of meeting	Planning Inspectorate Board Meetings
Date	20 January 2022
Venue	Virtual
Chair	Trudi Elliott

Present	Planning Inspectorate Board Meeting
Rebecca Driver (RD)	Non-Executive Director
Stephen Tetlow (ST)	Non-Executive Director
Sarah Richards (SR)	Chief Executive
Graham Stallwood (GS)	Director, Operations
Navees Rahman (NR)	Director, Corporate Services
Simon Gallagher (SG)	Director Planning (DLUHC)

In attendance
Strategy & Corporate Governance Lead (KT)
Head of Strategy & Change (SC)
Governance Administrative Officer (DP)
Head of Data and Performance (RG) (item 6)
Health, Safety & Wellbeing Manager (JB) (item 7)
Professional Lead (PL) (item 8)
Project Manager (BP) (item 8)
Operations Lead – NI and Project Speed (SGu) (item 8)
Operations Lead – Environmental Services (RH) (item 8)
Head of Operations (DP) (item 9)

Apologies	Planning Inspectorate Board Meeting
Sally Dixon (SD)	Non-Executive Director
Christine Thorby (CT)	Director of Strategy
Strategic Governance Officer (NP)

1.0 Welcome and Declaration of Interests

1.1 The Chair called for Declaration of Interest, of which there were none.

2.0 Minutes of November Board meeting and corporate action tracker

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

2.2 No further updates provided for the action tracker, actions are either in progress or completed.

Agreed: 2a) The minutes from the November Board meeting are an accurate record of the meeting.

3.0 December Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Panel key messages for the Board

3.1 TE gave an overview in the SD’s absence:

• output based measures on the impact of ED&I, induction process for people, making sure whilst happening virtually people are getting the support
• external messaging and aligning more with what we are doing internally, particular trying to attract more diverse workforce, focus on BAME, brand and attractiveness to encourage people to apply
• impressed with the breadth and depth of work taking place

3.2 SR updated since the Panel meeting, meetings have taken place with RTPI BME Planner Network and we are getting help with our recruitment, work on the Stonewall Equality Index continues and measures for this work will be key.

4.0 January Audit & Risk Assurance Committee (ARAC) key messages for the Board

4.1 As Chair of ARAC, RD gave the following update to the Board:

• The Committee reviewed the audit plan for this year, which is on track. The Inspectorate is part of a pilot to external audit, the opinion was that risks were stable and changes relate to classification of accounting standards.
• Overlaps were found between external (National Audit Office (NAO)) and internal (Government Internal Audit Agency (GIAA)) audit and the organisations will liaise to avoid duplication.
• Internal audit plan for next year ahead accepted. Benefits management audit had been pushed back within the Inspectorate. ARAC would like to look at benefits management, Executive Team will explore the rationale for any change.
• The Committee looked at business continuity framework and is comfortable with the position. Looked at multi-year financial modelling which is at an early stage for the Inspectorate.
• Papers for noting submitted to the Committee on the annual report process and fraud action plan, both were in a good place organisationally.

5.0 Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities update

SG provided the department update:

• Building safety is core part of the departmental work. There have been significant changes to way the Department support leaseholders.
• Levelling Up White paper will be published soon, decisions around retail policy, structures, and strategies to be made. The Secretary of State has said levelling up equates to social justice and is about equality.
• Recruitment for Directors of Place is taking place.
• More around the Planning Reform will come through the Queen’s speech.
• Capacity and capability work has launched, looking at the issues across the planning system and how to resolve for the long-term.
• On sustainability, lots taking place in this space. Following a session with the Director General at BEIS, SG will be presenting a paper to BEIS soon.
• Environmental Act has received Royal Assent; the Inspectorate will have a role in environmental recovery through Local Plans.

6.0 Performance Dashboard, including Operational Performance

6.1 Customer

• working to move the Zendesk data to the dashboard, in the meantime Customer Services Team (CST) provided insights from Zendesk covering November. Top five reasons for customers contacting CST:
• update on appeal post submission – 393 occasions
• unable to contact case officer – 75 occasions
• ask when their appeal is going to be validated – 50 occasions
• issue with Appeal Casework Portal (ACP) emails – 43 occasions
• ask how to make an appeal – 36 occasions.

6.2 Queries and complaints

• the average time of answering customer queries in November was 9.8 days compared to 8.6 days in October. This increase was due to issues with the ACP experienced in the second half of October

6.3 Customer satisfaction survey

• since the launch of Zendesk we have been sending customers satisfaction surveys, where queries are resolved and we have an email address. Headline results from respondents since the 1st September have been reviewed

6.4 High court data

• in December we received six challenges and there are currently 58 live High Court challenges
• in 2021/22 so far there are 86 High Court outcomes:
  • 35 when permission to challenge was refused at the preliminary stage
  • 17 quashed/ remitted for redetermination as we submitted to judgement or conceded the claim before going to court
  • 19 were won in court
  • 7 were lost in court
  • 1 was struck out, 6 were withdrawn, 1 was quashed (admin reasons)
  • costing of these will come in future dashboards.

6.5 Casework quality

• post decision assessment has taken place by Professional Leads; this data will support learning and development going forward and focus training needs
• as we gather more data, we can create a baseline

6.6 Diversity

• remain below Civil Service, team is working hard to make improvements, human library is coming to the Inspectorate
• building on the learning around being an active bystander and building training on this and work continues on the Stonewall index gap analysis
• gender Pay Gap – following a recent round of inspector recruitment where 50% of those appointed were women our gender pay gap has closed slightly

6.7 Performance

• the number of cases received were marginally higher then the number of closed with a rise of 67 cases in November and 10 in December
• closed more inquiries than we received in November and December
• closed slightly fewer hearing cases then we received in November and December
• written representation cases continue the same pattern as the overall trend
• focussing efforts on understanding why some cases take longer than others and understand this to bring the range down. The team is analysing the data

6.8 The Board thanked RG and team for their excellent work on developing the dashboard and presenting the data and the value it’s adding, keep up the good work.

Actions: 6a) RG to:

• add more information on the gender pay showing the amount of time in post across grades
• update the diversity stats from reglion to faith and belief
• add data by proportion of posts in areas on vacancy data
• provide the vacancy data that shows trends so issues can be easily identified, forecast and action taken, diagram and narrative that says the action we are taking, where expect to be, measure if the resources allocated are effective or not and take management decisions
• share the work being done on reducing the range or estimating unit costs with the Board

7.0 Health, Safety and Wellbeing (HS&W) – OFFICIAL SENSITITVE

7.1 OFFICIAL SENSITIVE item captured as part two minutes.

8.0 Planning Reform and Project Speed – (OFFICIAL SENSITIVE)

8.1 OFFICIAL SENSITIVE item captured as part two minutes.

9.0 Environmental system and COP26

9.1 The key update for the Board

• making good progress
• we want to embed a system that would meet standards and support our commitment around net zero and the pace at which to get there. We will embed the system, identify the gaps and move towards net zero.
• the plan currently focuses on measuring activities as opposed to impact, would be better to look at impact
• our policy has been intentionally set to avoid interfering with decision-making and will look at the footprint of the organisation. We do not have a mechanism for quantifying the impacts of decisions, this has been discussed by there were professional standards concerns and maintaining our responsibility to apply policy to make independent decisions
• the Strategy directorate have developed an action plan, the other directorates are still to complete action plans
• the organisation is involved with the Civil Service Environment Network

9.2 TE asked what can we achieve over the next year? DP explained we will have a fully embedded EMS, aligned with our corporate governance. The challenge we have is to plan the governance knowing it’s under review. The system will operate, but this does affect the functioning of the system in terms of rigour as we need to find an appropriate place to hold ourselves to account, and risks are actively managed.

9.3 The NEDs raised concern around capacity to monitor the system. On designing the system, ST suggested following others’ practice and developing our own operating rules.

9.4 TE said looking at the impact of the Inspectorate on environmental objectives is a question for the department. The planning system has not been aligned with UN sustainable goals, COP26 or Environmental Act. SG agreed policy decisions need to be consistent with net zero ambition and this will be worked through.

Agreed: 9a) DP and team should focus on the areas that we can measure and we can control.

Actions: 9b) DP to return to the Board with a plan to resource this work.

10.0 Forward agenda

10.1 TE to draft a blog for the Board with a piece from RD on ARAC.

Agreed: 10a) The forward agenda for the March Board meeting.

Next meeting: 24 March 2022