Transparency data

Board meeting minutes 29 July 2021 - The Planning Inspectorate

Updated 17 April 2024

Applies to England

Board meeting minutes - The Planning Inspectorate

Minutes 23 September 2021

Title of meeting	Planning Inspectorate Board Meetings
Date	29 July 2021
Venue	Virtual
Chair	Trudi Elliott

Present	Planning Inspectorate Board Meeting
Sally Dixon (SD)	Non-Executive Director
Rebecca Driver (RD)	Non-Executive Director
Stephen Tetlow (ST)	Non-Executive Director
Sarah Richards (SR)	Chief Executive
Navees Rahman (NR)	Director, Corporate Services
Christine Thorby (CT)	Director, Strategy
Simon Gallagher (SG)	Director, Planning (MHCLG)

In attendance
Strategy & Corporate Governance Lead (KT)
Head of Operations (TW)
Head of Data & Performance (RG) (item 4)
Change Portfolio Lead (TJ) (item 5)
Health, Safety & Wellbeing Manager (JB) (item 6)
Professional Lead – Local Plans (JY) (item 7)
Risk, Fraud & Business Continuity Manager (AP) (item 8)
Head of Finance & Commercial (JB) (item 9)

Apologies	Planning Inspectorate Board Meeting
Neil Hemington	Chief Planner (Welsh Government)
Graham Stallwood	Director, Operations

1.0 Welcome and Declaration of Interests

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

2.0 Minutes of previous Board meetings and corporate action tracker

2.1 No further comments were received on the May Board Minutes – part one, May Board minutes – part two and the June Board minutes

Corporate Action tracker

2.2 SG to provide blog for the Board.

Agreed:

2a) The minutes of the May and June Board meetings are an accurate record of the meetings.

Actions:

2b) TW to provide link to the Non-Executive Directors (NEDs) to updated customer guidance. 2c) NP to send SG last Board blog.

3.0 Sponsor Updates

MHCLG:

• Preparation for spending review submission is taking place, with work taking place over the summer.
• Planning Reform work continues, input from Planning Inspectorate colleagues has been insightful and helpful.
• Homes England are seeing changes which include a newly appointed CEO and Chair and review of the governance structure.

Welsh Government – Separation Project update:

• Job offers have been made to the team in Wales and response date is imminent.
• KT is reviewing the Framework Agreement with the Executive Team (ET), there will be a slight revision to be agreed with the MHCLG Sponsorship team.

Agreed:

3a) To note the Sponsor update.

Actions:

3b) ST to send SG the question about linking together Local Planning Authority (LPA), MHCLG and Inspectorate data and how we are progressing towards the National Data Strategy. SG to respond when information gathered.

4.0 Dashboard, including Operational Performance

4.1 Dashboard update for the Board:

• Response times to customer complaints continue to improve and is more comparable with pre-pandemic levels.
• 26 High Court challenge outcomes are known for 2021/22, of these outcomes two were lost in court.
• The number of cases received and closed are now levelling.
• Receipts continue to be at the top end of our estimate, medium to high level submissions were received, with less cases closing whilst we focussed on Hearing and Inquiry performance.
• Concern was raised about the number of cases in hand and how we are working to reduce this number. Focus on Hearing and Inquiry cases has had an impact on the overall number of cases in hand, a review of resource is taking place including salaried and non-salaried Inspector availability and recruitment of more inspector resource. An overlay of recruitment over our scenario planning needs to take place.
• Submissions for Local Plans are lower than expected, three closed in June.
• The Sizewell C National Infrastructure project has started, six projects are at recommendation stage.
• As part of process improvement for National Infrastructure, it will be important to gather the feedback from departmental applicants as well as other applicants, to understand their experience, why they are dissatisfied and where the issues are.

4.2 The Board discussed how high court challenge data is used to indicate the issues and cause of complaints. CT confirmed this data is collected and is held by the Professional Leads and is used for tracking and training. Complaints are also escalated to Professional Leads for decision making, view of implications on casework and training requirements.

4.3 As part of the discussion around performance and linked to the work of ODT, the Board would like to see what good performance would look like, the targets, the risks associated with achieving the targets and the measures set against what we are trying to achieve and investing in. Review policy interventions in the operational space and review our communications to our customers, letting people know what is going to happen and what will improve.

Actions:

4a) RG/ CT to review High Court data and the options available to add to the dashboard.

4b) TW/ GS to update the Board on how we are prioritising cases and working to reduce the number of cases in hand.

4c) RG/ GS/ TW to use the 90% percentile ranges as a way to track the amount of time on average taken in different parts of the system as a way to streamline process and save time.

4d) GS/ TW to consider the benefit of introducing a recovery group and a BAU group.

4e) RG/ GS/ TW to review how we are tracking NI projects that are refused and consider if there are benefits to the refusal, such as environmental.

4f) TW/ GS/ SG to discuss NI measures, making sure we are able to deliver the benefits and communicating changes with customers.

5.0 Change Portfolio update, including cumulative portfolio impact

5.1 The key update for the Board:

• From 1st April the Change Portfolio Group membership changed to Heads of Service and Professional Leads. Feedback has been positive and is giving a single view of change across the organisation and feeding into the Business Plan and and Strategic Plan.
• Key challenges are around budget underspend and which areas of work to bring forward and preparing for potential constraints in the future. The Future Ways of Working (FWoW) project is larger than initially envisaged.
• Areas of focus for the next three to six month are ODT and delivery of the appeal and application service, operating model for events and Welsh Separation project.

5.2 The Board discussed the FWoW project and how we will move into a manageable place. The Project Manager is working with the Head of HR to scope the project, look at the order of the activities, prioritising and how to take forward applying the continuous improvement model. There are some activities in the project that we will have to do. Resourcing is also being reviewed as more maybe needed.

5.3 Engagement plan for the project is being developed with the Communications Team, the team is a key stakeholder in the engagement plan. Focus at present is internal, but external engagement is recognised.

5.4 Benefit management processes are being developed following a session with ST and Government Internal Audit Agency on how to become benefits lead. TJ and team are working with the Finance and Corporate Governance Teams on how to track financial and non-financial benefits.

Agreed:

5a) The Board noted the update and changes in the Change Portfolio and that focus in the benefits tracking space is positive.

Actions:

5b) TJ to deepen the mapping to give a sense of the scale of projects and programmes and the impact on the organisation, which parts of the organisation will experience the change and when, including external impact.

6.0 Health, Safety & Wellbeing (HS&W) update

6.1 Key update for the Board:

• The Health, Safety and Wellbeing Committee will be reinstated as a sub-committee of Whitley rather than the ET.
• This year the people survey will include health and safety questions, the results will give an indication of where our health, safety and wellbeing culture currently is and will support us to further our work in this area.
• Progress against the HS&W plan is slow due to the number of people reaching out to JB with HS&W issues.

This is positive as people are seeking assistance from JB, resource will be joining JB to support the HS&W plan work.

• Accident, near misses and incidents at work – four reports made during March – May 2021.
• Defamation and Harassment policy has been drafted which includes physical stalking and harassment through to online harassment.
• Returning to Temple Quay House (TQH), JB attends the weekly COVID project board meeting and confirmed the return is being planned in a sensible way with the Commercial team carrying out lots of positive work and lots of communications from our Communications team.
• As part of preparation for return to TQH, JB monitors .Gov.uk website, H&S website, advice on ventilation and working from home. The Commercial team are also in regular contact with the Government Property Agency team.

Agreed:

6a) The Board agreed we are making good progress and we are signalling the importance of HS&W in the organisation.

Actions:

6b) NP/ JB to share link to Defamation and Harassment policy with the NEDs when adopted. 6c) NP to review and update forward look with more regular reporting on HS&W.

7.0 Local Plans Quality Framework

7.1 JY asked the Board for views on whether and how the quality framework should be given formal status within the Inspectorate. The Board gave the following feedback:

• Think about speed as well as quality and review the wording with a view to providing the community with more certainty around how quickly local plan examinations move.
• Review the framework alongside the training manual, how do we express this in the manual.
• Enable LPAs to submit survey responses anonymously to see if this will generate more feedback.
• Is there enough focus and emphasis on the customer and what are we going to do with the feedback, how will we embed.
• The delivery of quality frameworks is in the Business Plan for this year. The Local Plan framework is much further progressed. Enforcement and National Infrastructure frameworks are written, the Planning framework will be written when new Professional Leads starts. Professional Leads will be working together to make sure frameworks are consistent.
• Set up a review panel with peers in another organisation to help test quality assurance mechanism such as Ombudsman Service and/ or devolved nations.

Agreed:

7a) The Board agreed subject to tweaks in wording around timeliness, speed and customers they endorsed the approach.

Actions:

7b) JY to review the wording on timeliness, speed and customers.

7c) JY to come back to the Board or Strategic Assurance Panel with plan for using feedback, how this is related to the work on standard measures, building in increasing learning from our customers and update on quality framework development and implementation.

8.0 Strategic Risk Register

8.1 Key update for the Board:

• ET conduct a monthly deep dive into strategic risk, Directorate level risk reviews also take place on a monthly basis. Annually a strategic risk review and horizon scanning session takes place with ET.
• Recent risk reviews by ET are Transformation and savings, Capacity and Capability and consideration of a new data risk.
• Audit and Risk Assurance Committee (ARAC) had focussed on the process not content of the strategic risk management process. An issue was raised around whether or not SR would want to close a risk where the mitigations are in place and the risk is managed but the risk will not go away, such as HS&W and Cyber Security being risks that fall into this category. ARAC also identified it would be helpful to see the assurance map of how well mitigating measures are working so the Committee can review.

Actions:

8a) SR/ AP/ SG to discuss the broad headings against the risks, particularly capacity and capability and risk around resource planning. This is explicit for the spending review, long term supply of professional staff into the organisation. Is the reputational risk captured in the stakeholder risk?

8b) ET/ AP to review the strategic risk register, does it reflect the things that keep ET awake at night.

8c) ET/ AP to consider if the Cyber Security Risk should be on the strategic risk register.

9.0 Strategic Plan

9.1 Key update for the Board:

• Development of Strategic Plan to move away from manual based approach to web-based presentation and a more useful comms aid.
• There will be three core strategies to support the strategic vision.
• The plan and strategies will be published in the summer and will also help to inform the spending review submission.

Agreed:

9a) Board agreed to spend more time on the Strategic Plan and Spending Review at NED Briefing.

Actions:

9b) NP to schedule Strategic Plan and Spending Review into the 13th August NED Briefing.

9c) KT to share paper and slides with the NEDs for briefing.

10.0 Forward look

10.1 The Board asked to be kept informed of plans to return to TQH.

Next meeting: 23 September 2021