Item7AAPlanningServicePerformanceUpdate

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 7 27/05/2022

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Title: FOR INFORMATION

	PLANNING SERVICE PERFORMANCE UPDATE

Pre­pared by: Gav­in Miles, Head of Stra­tegic Planning

	Nasim Mehrabi, Graduate Planner
	

Pur­pose To update and inform the Com­mit­tee on the stat­ist­ic­al per­form­ance of the CNPA plan­ning ser­vice to Quarter 2 of ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ (and where avail­able stat­ist­ics for Q3 and Q4 of ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂) and wider plan­ning ser­vice work deliv­ery, includ­ing the feed­back on the last Plan­ning Per­form­ance Frame­work sub­mis­sion from Scot­tish Ministers.

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 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 2020. There has been a delay in report­ing since the last report to the Com­mit­tee, how­ever this will resume on a 6 monthly basis going forward.

Com­plete Plan­ning Ser­vice Per­form­ance Update to Quarter 2 ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ 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. 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 I and 2 show the

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 7 27/05/2022

offi­cial stat­ist­ics for applic­a­tions that did not have pro­cessing agree­ments as well as the times­cales for applic­a­tions with pro­cessing agreements.

Fig­ure I

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

Fig­ure 2

[Chart: Aver­age Time for Determ­in­a­tion of Non-House­hold­er Loc­al Devel­op­ments in Scot­land (weeks)]

1. Mem­bers should be aware that the com­par­is­on with oth­er plan­ning author­it­ies is a guide but not rep­res­ent­at­ive com­par­is­on. The CNPA’s stat­ist­ics are based on the small num­bers of the applic­a­tions that are called in and determ­ined via by the CNPA Plan­ning Com­mit­tee in any quarter, where­as the stat­ist­ics for loc­al author­it­ies are based on the tens or even hun­dreds of applic­a­tions that are mainly determ­ined by officers under del­eg­ated powers.
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

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 7 27/05/2022

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.

Fig­ure 3

[Chart: 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 (below) shows a con­tin­ued over­all upward trend in the per­cent­age of decision notices for loc­al devel­op­ments issued with­in 7 days.

Fig­ure 4

[Chart: Per­cent­age of Decision Notices for Loc­al Devel­op­ments Issued with­in 7 days]

Plan­ning Ser­vice Improve­ments ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂

1. In the Plan­ning Per­form­ance Frame­work ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ the CNPA set out the fol­low­ing Plan­ning Ser­vice Improve­ments for ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂. The CNPA Plan­ning team are pleased to report work has begun and is ongo­ing to meet all of the lis­ted ser­vice improve­ments. A pro­ject plan for the third Cairngorms Nation­al Park Design Awards has been

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 7 27/05/2022

draf­ted and a mar­ket­ing and engage­ment plan will be pro­duced to ensure max­im­um pub­lic engage­ment ahead of the planned pro­gram for 2023.

After a very suc­cess­ful pub­lic con­sulta­tion on the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP), the con­sulta­tion responses have been ana­lysed and the final plan is now in pre­par­a­tion. Once adop­ted the NPPP will act as the Region­al Spa­tial Strategy (RSS) for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park area. Spe­cial­ist train­ing for com­mit­tee mem­bers on land­scape in rela­tion to wind farm devel­op­ments has been sched­uled for later this year, in part due to a need to focus and com­plete the deliv­ery of the NPPP first. Work is ongo­ing to con­tinu­ally mon­it­or and deliv­er train­ing to the Com­mit­tee on mat­ters of cla­ri­fic­a­tion where addi­tion­al training/​or inform­a­tion is deemed necessary.

²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ Plan­ning Ser­vice Improvements

	Status
1 Con­tin­ue to sim­pli­fy mech­an­isms for secur­ing plan­ning oblig­a­tions and reduce the need for plan­ning agreements.	Sim­pli­fied arrange­ments with High­land Coun­cil now in place.
2 Plan for the third Cairngorms Nation­al Park Design Awards.	Plan ready for 2023
3 Con­tin­ue to make the plan­ning pro­cess more access­ible enhan­cing our use of tech­no­logy to increase access­ib­il­ity and engage­ment in the plan­ning pro­cess. We will also be tri­al­ing the use of the new soft­ware (com­mon­place) to increase engage­ment in pub­lic con­sulta­tions by mak­ing the mater­i­al more access­ible to a wider audience.	Com­mon­place trialed in Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan.
4 Con­tin­ue our mon­it­or­ing of hill tracks devel­op­ment and increase aware­ness of policy amongst estates and land man­agers — Our mon­it­or­ing and enforce­ment of unau­thor­ised hill tracks has increased in recent years. Dur­ing 2021/2022 we will con­tin­ue work on com­plet­ing a mon­it­or­ing pro­ject using aer­i­al pho­to­graphy and to provide fur­ther guid­ance for estates and land managers.	Work ongo­ing
5 Pre­pare the next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan incor­por­at­ing the Region­al Spa­tial Strategy for the Nation­al Park.	Work near­ing completion
6 Deliv­er spe­cial­ist train­ing to com­mit­tee mem­bers on land­scape in rela­tion to wind farm devel­op­ments – and con­tin­ue to mon­it­or gaps in mem­bers know­ledge to deliv­er suit­able addi­tion­al train­ing as required	Work ongoing/​Sched­uled for delivery
7 Con­sol­id­ate past improve­ments and pro­ced­ures embed­ding changes and improvements	Work ongo­ing

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 7 27/05/2022

Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment feed­back on the Plan­ning Per­form­ance Frame­work ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁

1. The feed­back from the Plan­ning Min­is­ter on the CNPA’s tenth Plan­ning Per­form­ance Frame­work (2020÷21) was again pos­it­ive. The table below shows the CNPA has retained its min­im­um per­form­ance against key mark­ers in all cat­egor­ies, with an improve­ment in the CNPA’s con­tinu­ous improve­ment marker.

²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ CNPA Per­form­ance against Key Markers

MARK­ER	12⁄13	13⁄14	14⁄15	15⁄16	16⁄17	17⁄18	18⁄19	19⁄20	20⁄21
1 Decision-mak­ing
2 Pro­cessing agreements
3 Early collaboration
4 Leg­al agreements
5 Enforce­ment charter
6 Con­tinu­ous improvement
7 Loc­al devel­op­ment plan
8 Devel­op­ment plan scheme
9 Elec­ted mem­bers early engagement
10 Cross sec­tor stake­hold­ers engaged early
11 Reg­u­lar and pro­por­tion­ate policy advice
12 Cor­por­ate work­ing across services
13 Shar­ing good prac­tice, skills and knowledge
14 Stalled sites / leg­acy cases
15 Developer contributions:

Next Report

1. The next plan­ning ser­vice mon­it­or­ing report will be pro­duced in Quarter 3 of ²⁰²²⁄₂₃

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