Item7AAPlanningServicePerformanceUpdatev

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 7 09/12/2022

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR INFORM­A­TION Title: PLAN­NING SER­VICE PER­FORM­ANCE UPDATE Pre­pared by: Dan Har­ris, Plan­ning Man­ager, For­ward Plan­ning & Ser­vice Improve­ment Nas­im Mehr­abi, Plan­ning Officer (Devel­op­ment Plan­ning) Pur­pose To update and inform the Com­mit­tee on the stat­ist­ic­al per­form­ance of the CNPA plan­ning ser­vice to Quarter 2 of ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ for CNPA stat­ist­ics, enforce­ment activ­ity, and wider plan­ning ser­vice improve­ment work.

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 May 2022.

Plan­ning Ser­vice Per­form­ance Update to Quarter 2 ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ 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 offi­cial stat­ist­ics for applic­a­tions that did not have pro­cessing agree­ments as well as the times­cales for applic­a­tions with pro­cessing agreements.

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 have pro­cessing agree­ments as well as the times­cales for applic­a­tions with pro­cessing agreements.

Fig­ure I

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

Fig­ure 2

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 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

Aver­age time (weeks) for Loc­al Devel­op­ments by quarter and rolling 12 months (line)

Issu­ing decision notices

1. Due to the low num­ber of applic­a­tions decided by the CNPA delays out­with the Authority’s con­trol can impact the times­cales for issu­ing decision notices. Two such examples for the peri­od cov­er­ing QI (one of two decision notices issued) and Q2 (one of four decisions notices issued) where a late pay­ment of fees by an applic­ant res­ul­ted in a short delay to decision notice issuing.

Fig­ure 4

Per­cent­age of decision notices for Loc­al Devel­op­ments Issued with­in 7 days

Plan­ning Enforce­ment Activity

1. The CNPA has iden­ti­fied a high­er num­ber of breaches of plan­ning con­sent on devel­op­ments that have been imple­men­ted over the past 6 months than over the pre­vi­ous years. From liais­on with oth­er plan­ning author­it­ies, this appears to be the case across many parts of Scot­land as some devel­op­ment restar­ted fol­low­ing Cov­id restrictions.

2. Mem­bers will be aware that the CNPA has served Breach of Con­di­tion notices in Aviemore and Grant­own-on-Spey and is invest­ig­at­ing form­al action on oth­er sites as well as fur­ther form­al action on out­stand­ing cases. Because some cases may lead to leg­al action and poten­tial pro­sec­u­tion, they are not cases that can be dis­cussed in pub­lic until they have been resolved or form­al action has been completed.

Plan­ning Ser­vice Improve­ments 2022 – 23

1. In the Plan­ning Per­form­ance Frame­work ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ the CNPA set out eight Plan­ning Ser­vice Improve­ments for ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ that were based on the oper­a­tion­al capa­city of the plan­ning team at that point in time. Work is under­way on each item but staff capa­city in the plan­ning team and across the CNPA can influ­ence our abil­ity to com­plete items.

²⁰²²⁄₂₃ Plan­ning Ser­vice Improve­ments | |Status| | — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -| — — — — — — -| |1 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 ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ we will con­tin­ue work on com­plet­ing a mon­it­or­ing pro­ject using aer­i­al pho­to­graphy. | Work ongo­ing| |2 Adopt the next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (2022−2027) which will act as the Nation­al Parks Region­al Spa­tial Strategy (RSS).| Com­plete | |3 Adopt the final two pieces of Sup­ple­ment­ary Guid­ance; Developer Con­tri­bu­tions and Hous­ing, to sup­port the deliv­ery of the LDP Polices.| Par­tially Com­plete| |4 Sup­port High­land Coun­cil imple­ment Short Term Let Area in Badenoch and Strath­spey and pre­pare CNPA plan­ning guid­ance on Short-Term Letting.|Work ongo­ing| |5 Final­ise the plan for the CNPA Design Awards; begin the deliv­ery of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Design Awards, through an engage­ment and aware­ness cam­paign begin­ning toward the end of 2022. The Design Awards will be sched­uled to be con­duc­ted in the Summer/​Autumn of 2023.|Work Ongo­ing| |6 Con­tin­ue to review the effect­ive­ness of the deliv­ery of the Action Pro­gramme and DPS to ensure they are access­ible and com­pre­hens­ive in their report­ing of the LDP.|Work ongo­ing| |7 Deliv­er spe­cial­ist train­ing to com­mit­tee mem­bers on land­scape in rela­tion to wind farm devel­op­ments— and with con­tin­ued reviews to mon­it­or gaps in mem­bers know­ledge to deliv­er suit­able addi­tion­al train­ing as required.|Work ongo­ing| |8 Review the format and con­tent of the Plan­ning Ser­vice Per­form­ance Updates repor­ted to the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee; Improve the clar­ity and data rep­res­ent­a­tion in a more enga­ging and mean­ing­ful manner.|Work ongoing|

Next Report

1. The next plan­ning ser­vice mon­it­or­ing report will be in June 2023.

Dan Har­ris & Nas­im Mehr­abi Decem­ber 2022 danharris@​cairngorms.​co.​uk nasimmehrabi@​cairngorms.​co.​uk