Item10PlanningServicePerformanceUpdate

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 10 28/6/19

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR INFORM­A­TION

Title: PLAN­NING SER­VICE PER­FORM­ANCE UPDATE

Pre­pared by: Gav­in Miles, Head of Plan­ning and Communities

Pur­pose

To update and inform the Com­mit­tee on the stat­ist­ic­al per­form­ance of the CNPA plan­ning ser­vice to Quarter I of ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ and wider plan­ning ser­vice work delivery.

Recom­mend­a­tion

That the Committee:

i. Note the intern­al plan­ning ser­vice mon­it­or­ing res­ults out­lined in this report

Back­ground

1. The CNPA Plan­ning Ser­vice and Man­age­ment Team bian­nu­al per­form­ance reports to exam­ine plan­ning ser­vice per­form­ance and imple­ment improve­ments and changes to the ser­vice. Officers take per­form­ance updates to the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee every six months for inform­a­tion and as a way of sup­ple­ment­ing annu­al Plan­ning Per­form­ance Frame­work (PPF) reports and the Scot­tish Government’s feed­back on PPF reports. The Plan­ning Committee’s last plan­ning ser­vice per­form­ance update was in Decem­ber 2018.

Plan­ning Ser­vice Per­form­ance Update to Quarter I ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀

Determ­in­a­tion times­cales and pro­cessing agreements

1. The CNPA’s use of pro­cessing agree­ments con­tin­ues to be a good way to provide cer­tainty for applic­ants and for CNPA staff. Dur­ing the final two quar­ters of ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉, 93% of all the plan­ning applic­a­tions determ­ined by the CNPA had pro­cessing agree­ments. The agreed times­cales were met on 72% of these applic­a­tions. The aver­age time for determ­in­a­tion of plan­ning applic­a­tions with a pro­cessing agree­ment was 16.4 weeks, 10 weeks faster than dur­ing the first six months of the year.

2. The use of pro­cessing agree­ments is reflec­ted in the offi­cial stat­ist­ics pro­duced by the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment, which exclude times­cales for applic­a­tions with pro­cessing agree­ments. Fig­ures 1 and 2 show the offi­cial stat­ist­ics for applic­a­tions that did not

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 10 28/6/19

have pro­cessing agree­ments and the fact that dur­ing quar­ters 3 and 4, only one applic­a­tion was determ­ined that did not have a pro­cessing agree­ment and that applic­a­tion was determ­ined in 8 weeks.

Fig­ure I

Aver­age Time for plan­ning applic­a­tion determ­in­a­tion for Loc­al Devel­op­ments (most CNPA call-in apps)

Fig­ure 2

Aver­age time for loc­al non house­hold­er applic­a­tions (weeks) comparison

1. Although the use of pro­cessing agree­ments has been an effect­ive way of man­aging cases and provid­ing cer­tainty for applic­ants as well as the CNPA, there has been a clear trend of pro­cessing times­cales extend­ing over time with­in pro­cessing agree­ments. This was par­tic­u­larly evid­ent dur­ing the lat­ter part of ²⁰¹⁷⁄₁₈. This has gen­er­ally been because applic­ants seek exten­sions of time from the ori­gin­al agree­ment in order to provide the inform­a­tion needed to determ­ine their applic­a­tion. Although the times­cales have reduced over ²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉, the plan­ning team con­tin­ue to explore ways of draw­ing such applic­a­tions to a faster conclusion.

2. The intern­al audit of the plan­ning ser­vice that repor­ted dur­ing ²⁰¹⁵⁄₁₆ recom­men­ded that the CNPA use a rolling annu­al aver­age indic­at­or for ser­vice per­form­ance mon­it­or­ing. Fig­ure 3 shows the CNPA’s quarterly aver­age against a rolling annu­al aver­age fig­ure. In simple terms, if the aver­age time for a quarter is lower than the rolling aver­age fig­ure, then per­form­ance should be improv­ing, but giv­en the small num­ber of applic­a­tions that are being recor­ded in this way, the data is eas­ily misunderstood.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 10 28/6/19

Fig­ure 3

Aver­age Time (weeks) Loc­al Devel­op­ments by quarter and rolling 12 months (line) Issu­ing decision notices

1. The plan­ning ser­vice has con­tin­ued to main­tain a pat­tern of swift decision notice pro­duc­tion fol­low­ing plan­ning com­mit­tee decisions.

Fig­ure 4

% of decision notices issued with­in 7 days of determination

Pro­posed Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan Con­sulta­tion Update

1. The Plan­ning Com­mit­tee will receive a full report on the con­sulta­tion on the pro­posed LDP in August 2019. The plan­ning team are com­plet­ing the ana­lys­is of the 207 form­al responses and pre­par­ing the ​‘Sched­ule 4’ doc­u­ments that set out the CNPA’s pos­i­tion on them pri­or to Exam­in­a­tion by a Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Report­er from the Dir­ect­or­ate for Plan­ning and Envir­on­ment­al Appeals (DPEA).

2. Suc­cess in such con­sulta­tions can be meas­ured in dif­fer­ent ways. The LDP is inev­it­ably a detailed doc­u­ment that requires time and effort for any­one to com­ment on mean­ing­fully. This imme­di­ately means that those with passing interest or little time are unlikely to con­sider it in detail if at all. Rep­res­ent­a­tions on the pro­posed Plan are mainly in form of objec­tions, often from those dir­ectly affected and mainly from those with time through employ­ment or life­style. The drop in ses­sions held across the Nation­al Park were often well-atten­ded and in many cases people went away from them bet­ter-informed. A total of around 220 people atten­ded the drop in ses­sions, the major­ity of whom staff estim­ated to be in the 60+ age range.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 10 28/6/19

1. The CNPA also under­took an online and social media cam­paign to pro­mote the pro­posed LDP con­sulta­tion with videos and inter­act­ive online tools. It is not clear wheth­er the cam­paign and mater­i­als pro­duced to sup­port it trans­late to a bet­ter informed pub­lic or any meas­ur­able change in the responses to the con­sulta­tion. How­ever, the way the mater­i­al was presen­ted and shared did res­ult in very sig­ni­fic­antly more engage­ment with social media than in any oth­er cam­paign that the CNPA has under­taken, with a gen­er­al engage­ment rate of 26% of those exposed to the con­tent (40,000 of the total reach of 153,000). This was sig­ni­fic­antly great­er than any pre­vi­ous CNPA cam­paign, includ­ing those for sub­jects that we per­ceive as more imme­di­ately enga­ging and less con­ten­tious. The campaign’s suc­cess was test­a­ment to hard and cre­at­ive work by the for­ward plan­ning and com­mu­nic­a­tions teams and will help the CNPA improve such work in future.

Enforce­ment Update

1. As the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee are aware the CNPA has com­mit­ted to increas­ing our mon­it­or­ing of hill tracks and rais­ing aware­ness of policy amongst estates and land man­agers. The CNPA has a large num­ber of live invest­ig­a­tions into poten­tial breaches that are not repor­ted in pub­lic because to do so could under­mine poten­tial form­al enforce­ment action and ulti­mately, pos­sible pro­sec­u­tion of asso­ci­ated offences. The fre­quency of ret­ro­spect­ive plan­ning applic­a­tions for track improve­ments to the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee provides an indic­a­tion of the mon­it­or­ing work, and invest­ig­a­tions, as well as quer­ies from mem­bers of the public.

2. To sup­port this work, the CNPA is cur­rently employ­ing an intern to under­take a com­pre­hens­ive map­ping exer­cise of exist­ing tracks across the moor­land and hills over the Nation­al Park using the most up to date aer­i­al pho­to­graphy and satel­lite imagery. Once com­pleted, the map­ping will provide a good baseline from which to mon­it­or change. It will include all the long-estab­lished tracks, those that have been author­ised through applic­a­tions for plan­ning per­mis­sion, pri­or noti­fic­a­tion or pri­or approv­al, and will attempt to map the well-estab­lished or obvi­ous ATV track lines. Our inten­tion is that once the map­ping is com­pleted and the data is appro­pri­ately clas­si­fied and qual­i­fied, it will be avail­able in pub­lic as well as for the CNPA’s use.

3. One of the most inter­est­ing pos­sib­il­it­ies of the pro­ject has been the invest­ig­a­tion of freely avail­able satel­lite images, some of which are renewed very fre­quently, lead­ing to poten­tial for a degree of auto­mated mon­it­or­ing of change in future. This part of the pro­ject is at an early stage but has poten­tial to make some mon­it­or­ing of change in remote and little vis­ited places more reli­able in future.

Plan­ning Ser­vice Improve­ments ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀

1. The Plan­ning Com­mit­tee approved five improve­ment pri­or­it­ies for the plan­ning ser­vice dur­ing ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ at the 25 April 2019 meet­ing. Work is under­way on all of these priorities.

²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ Plan­ning Ser­vice Improve­ments Status

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 10 28/6/19

²⁰¹⁸⁄₁₉ Plan­ning Ser­vice Improve­ments Status 1 Sim­pli­fy mech­an­isms for secur­ing plan­ning oblig­a­tions and Work reduce need for plan­ning agree­ments. ongoing

Estab­lish­ing sim­pler, cheap­er and faster ways of secur­ing neces­sary plan­ning oblig­a­tions 2 Devel­op and deliv­er a schools engage­ment / involve­ment Plan­ning pro­gramme. underway

In addi­tion to work with loc­al sec­ond­ary Schools, we will ask the emer­ging Cairngorms Youth Action Group to help co-design a pro­gramme with young people. 3 Plan and deliv­er work­shop on nat­ur­al her­it­age with SNH, Plan­ning SEPA and Loc­al Author­it­ies underway

Shar­ing good prac­tice and ensur­ing con­sist­ent applic­a­tion of policy and prac­tice across the Nation­al Park to be held autumn 2019. 4 Under­take a mon­it­or­ing scheme on hol­i­day and second Invest­ig­a­tions home own­er­ship, changes of use from res­id­en­tial prop­erty into data and impacts on com­munit­ies. availablity

The devel­op­ment of the LDP has increased aware­ness of the changes in use of res­id­en­tial prop­erty to short term hol­i­day let­ting prop­erty. The data avail­able through coun­cil tax and non-domest­ic rates records requires some ground troth­ing for accur­acy and the CNPA will under­take some addi­tion­al mon­it­or­ing of newly com­pleted hous­ing devel­op­ments. We will also pub­lish a Plan­ning Advice Note to explain the rules on use and changes of use. 5 Increase our mon­it­or­ing of hill tracks devel­op­ment and Work aware­ness of policy amongst estates and land man­agers. ongoing

Our mon­it­or­ing and enforce­ment of unau­thor­ised hill tracks has increased over the past three years. Dur­ing ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ we will com­plete a mon­it­or­ing pro­ject using aer­i­al pho­to­graphy and will provide fur­ther guid­ance for estates and land managers.

Next Report

1. The next plan­ning ser­vice mon­it­or­ing report will be in Decem­ber 2019.

Gav­in Miles June 2019 gavinmiles@​cairngorms.​co.​uk