Transparency data

Board meeting minutes 25th September 2023 - The Planning Inspectorate

Updated 17 April 2024

Applies to England

Minutes                24th November 2023                             

Title of meeting	Planning Inspectorate Board Meetings
Date	25 September 2023
Venue	Virtual meeting
Chair	Trudi Elliott

Present	Planning Inspectorate Board Meeting (in person)
Stephen Tetlow (ST)	Non-Executive Director
Rebecca Driver (RD)	Non-Executive Director
Paul Morrison (PM)	Chief Executive
Charlotte Spencer (CS)	Director, DLUHC

In attendance
Corporate Governance Officer (NP)	minutes (full meeting)
Executive Support and Governance Officer (DP)	meeting support (full meeting)
Richard Schofield (RS)	Chief Planning Inspector
Graham Stallwood (GS)	Chief Operating Officer
Sean Canavan (SC)	Chief Strategy Officer
Rachel Graham (RG)	Chief Digital and Information Officer
Shilpi Sahai (SS)	Chief People Officer
Head of Finance (P’OT)	(sub for Chief Finance Officer, Jo Butcher)
Arthur Young (AY)	Development Plans, DLUHC
Head of Strategy and Change (SH)	(item 5)
Strategy and Corporate Governance Lead (BMc)	(item 5) *
Customer Insights Lead (ZC)	(item 5)*
Head of Digital & Data (AB)	(item 6)

Observers
HR Services Lead (RH)

1.0 - Welcome and Declaration of Interests

1.1  The Chair called for Declarations of Interest, PM declared he is a member of a Trustee Board for the Refugee Charity, Reset.  The declaration is formally logged on our system.

2.0 - Minutes of July Board meeting and corporate action tracker 2.1  No further comments or amendments required to the part one or part two July minutes. 

Agreed:

2a) The part one and part two minutes of the July Board meeting are an accurate record of the meeting.

Actions:

2b)  NP to close action 13 and update action 18 on the log to reflect RD completed the action.

3.0 Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) update

3.1  CS and AY gave the following DLUHC update to the Board:

• New Director General for Regeneration appointed, Joanna Key.  Joining DLUHC from the Treasury.   

• Third reading of the Levelling Up Bill is taking place in the House of Lords.  The Bill will go through the final stages between the House of Commons and House of Lords until Royal Assent.

• Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP) operational reforms have now closed.  Drafting of the secondary legislation is underway.

• Local Plans consultation closes in October, workshops taking place with Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) have yielded positive and constructive feedback, particularly around timeframes and resources.

• Digital phase of the reforms is coming to an end, with final gateway show and tells taking place last week.

• Digital Director made an offer to share geospatial commission information with the Planning Inspectorate Executive Team (ET).

• Autumn statement date confirmed for the 22nd November, as part of the bidding process, funding will be included for NSIP digitalisation.

• PM explained funding discovery work is underway as we develop our strategic plan. 

3.2  The Board discussed the following:

• TE asked if the team have any oversight of the impact on the Planning Inspectorate following the issues for Birmingham City Council (BCC) and non-determination cases.  AY was not aware of this specifically and agreed to monitor with the Deputy Director of Planning LH.  GS is in regular contact with the Chief Planner at BCC.

• ST asked if wider budget is available across the planning system for digitalisation.  CS confirmed bids do not include funding for this work.  

Agreed:

3a)  CS and team to arrange show and tell session for the Board and extend invitation to the new NEDs.

3b)  CS and team to arrange for Digital Director to share geospatial commission information.

3c)  CS, AY and team to return comments on the strategic plan to SH and BMc by Friday 29th September.

4.0 Chief Executive’s update to the Board

4.1  PM gave the following update to the Board:

• PM received two Ministerial commissions from Minister Rowley and Minister Maclean in relation to NSIP.  PM responded with a joint submission looking at funding, resources, and system. 

• Governance structure for the Pay and Reward Board has changed, bringing together conversations with Trade Unions in one place, focusing less on this year and moving to focus on the future and reward structure.

•  Alternative accommodation for Planning Inspectorate staff now secured. 

•  Challenging conversations are taking place across ET around the budget.  Discussions are focussed on the business plan, strategic plan and how resourcing is allocated.

4.2  The Board discussed the following:

• TE asked how ET is balancing the collective view, against own view of requirements.  PM explained ET conversations are focussed on individual resourcing needs at present.  Discussions are underway around ways of working and getting the right governance in place.  There are lots of aspirations and is a work in progress. 

5.0 Balance scorecard

5.1  BM gave the following update to the Board on the balance scorecard:

• Following feedback from ET and Board, changes have been made to the scorecard, which include the addition of an executive summary, work is underway to establish baselines and tolerances for measures, new data to track the casework backlog, movement of risk ratings, unit cost measures and complaint response times.

• Good progress is being made to improve our performance; more cases have closed than were received during August.

• Delivering through change, confidence levels have improved across three of the four workstreams.  There is concern around improving our quality assurance process across our services due to a number of core dependencies.

• The remaining three priority areas remain stable.

5.2  The Board discussed the following:

*  RD reflected on the scorecard and agreed the information provides the right level of assurance.  RD suggested some additions to the scorecard, captured as action 5b.

• ST asked who is using the scorecard, as this is a communication tool to show the top and important issues and consider what the Non-Executive Directors (NEDs) need to see.  ST suggested some additions to the scorecard, captured at 5c and 5d.  

• TE reflected the unit cost data is a good addition, productivity is going to be increasingly critical whilst resources are not increasing, what other information will the Board receive.  How much of this information is shared internally and the trend on cost.

• PM explained the scorecard is used by ET and more widely in the organisation at different reporting levels.  The big gap is on the productivity measure, unit costs aligned with productivity, we are working on this.  We also need more on quality and what is driving complaints.

• RD asked if the worsening Health and Safety risk is about budget or something else.  SS explained work is underway to bring the three health and safety risks together.  With a Health and Safety Manager recruited and joining in October, SS will be collaborating with them and the Learning and Development team to develop a plan to address the issues highlighted in the risks.

• RD asked if the lone working solution is working and in a good place, SS explained there is room for improvement and is a work in progress. 

• TE referred to the Institute of Customer Service (ICS) scores, lots of work is take place around complaints, systems, processes and feedback loops.  Is this a resource issue or something further for the Board to explore.  ZC explained this issue is around team resourcing.  Systemically, issues on reporting against what we are learning.  A session will take place with ET to explore further.  The wider challenge is around the learning loop from complaints and links back to conversations on quality. 

• RD  asked why NSIP decision times were trending upwards.  GS explained this is due to the wider system and our role through the process, which applicants can stop ahead of the examination period and restarting is with the applicant.  We meet the statutory deadlines.  RD suggested showing total time and the number of weeks with the Inspectorate to track the trends on statutory deadlines and the applicants’ impact on total time for NSIP applications separately.

• RD asked about the closing of strategic risk s23. SS explained that whilst risk s23 has closed, two new risks were added to the register relating to resourcing.

• ST suggested the Board monitor the digitalisation issue, cyber risk is the highest risk on the register.  We need a balance of investment in legacy debt and improving the risk is sufficient.  The issues with the wider data strategy, architecture and the wider planning system need addressing.  It’s disappointing this still needs to be resolved.  The written representation performance has gone up whilst everything else remains flat, where are we heading, what is the forecast and trajectory.  Has the commercial strategy stalling caused any issues.

• PM explained the trajectory of time take on written representations has gone up as GS and team tackle the older cases in the system.  We are issuing more decisions and intake of appeals is going down.  The team working on the commercial strategy had to turn their focus on resolving the issues around accommodation, which was ET’s decision.

• RG explained the cyber security contract and service is in place which gives us more capability and support.  We have also recruited into vacancies in the team.  Work is underway with DLUHC to put a plan in place and make more use of the security contract, it is moving in the right direction.  On the wider digitalisation challenge, we are looking at how we can connect with LPA systems.  The data architect is looking at this for appeals and Local Plans.  Our challenge is around funding and resource. 

Agreed:

5a)   The scorecard is an interesting piece of work and thanked all involved for their work.

Actions:

5b)  BM to add to short and long run changes to slide three to show if changes are one off or bigger trend. Look at productivity to supplement the unit cost section.  Real or nominal measure for unit costs.  Add a chart showing the age of cases that are in the system.  Add a measure on time to recruit and if campaigns are successful of not.

5c)  BM to extract a wheel for the targets to demonstrate performance against those.

5d)  BM to provide a strategic view of digitalisation and how we are performing.

5e)  SC, ZC and RS to return to November or January Board to discuss how we measure quality and manage learning.

5f)  BM to show the total time taken and the number of weeks with the Inspectorate for NSIP performance.

5g)  ZC to produce monthly summary of FOI requests for ET, including those FOIs rejected.

6.0 GDPR, Redaction and Data – OFFICIAL SENSITIVE

6.1  OFFICIAL SENSITIVE item captured as part two minutes.

7.0 Forward Look, review of the meeting, blog key points

7.1  The Board took the opportunity to thank ST and RD for their work as part of the Board, support to TE as Chair and the ET.  Leading in critical issues such as systems, people, structures and the external environment.  ST specifically for the work on digital and data and to RD for her work with internal and external audit colleagues. 

Actions:

7a)  SC to draft Board blog.

7b)  NP to add FOI/ Complaints to November/ January Board forward look.

Next Board meeting 20th October 2023 (in person Bristol):

• Planning Inspectorate Board – 1.45pm – 4.00pm