Benchmark roundup – why bother
- 1. Benchmark roundup – why bother? • Benchmarking since 2009 – 276 councils participated, many more than once – Confidential, but valuable dataset • Publish aggregate as a “state of the nation” – Before we forget – for future benefit
- 2. What we’ll cover • Costs and subsidy of planning • Fees • Productivity • Customer survey • Planning Quality Framework
- 3. What do councils spend the money on?
- 5. Percentage of LPA cost not covered by fees and income • Each vertical line represents a different LPA • Average subsidy = almost 70% (at the time)
- 6. Cost per hour Average cost per person per productive hour Work type 2011 2012/13 Combined Planning applications (direct) £48 £48 £48 Planning applications (other) £40 £40 £40 Compliance work - enforcement etc. £41 £41 £41 Strategic Planning £51 £55 £52 All planning activities £46 £46 £46 - Productive hourly rate = £46 - Compare this with pre-app charges (!)
- 7. Majors = profit. Avoid conditions! Application count Cost of processing per app Fee per app at time of benchmark % not covered by fee Major non residential 2170 2886 6251 -117% All dwellings 14166 1668 1294 22% Minor non residential 21288 794 410 48% Householders 48020 408 131 68% Heritage 12006 450 2 100% All waste 210 6292 2604 59% All minerals 191 2411 2248 7% All others 48817 392 158 60% Conditions 12781 270 92 66% All app types 159649 602 356 41%
- 8. Productivity • “We are not updating the 150 cases per officer thing”
- 9. Productivity • “We are not updating the 150 cases per officer thing” – In the end, we have (sort of)
- 10. Caseload = 144 / case officer
- 11. Productivity revisited • In 2002, it was professional case officer + admin types. Now less differentiation. • Not cases per DC officer, but cases per person – Derives total head count – In the ODPM study, this was “less than 100”
- 12. All-in figure is 88 cases per person
- 13. All-in figure is 88 cases per person
- 14. Work mix – high numbers of simple applications. Fast track.
- 15. Size seems to make some difference Large authorities = often higher productivity
- 16. Customers • In aggregate there were clear messages – Talk to us, generally. It’s just manners. – Talk to us *especially* when there are issues – Let us amend – Councils (generally) fail on customer care • We fail because we don’t communicate and follow a target culture
- 17. Reflections on the old benchmark results • One size does not fit all • National indicators hide almost everything interesting and useful about performance • Subsidy represents a risk to development • Communication is often weak
Editor's Notes
- #2: 276 out of approximately 350 local planning authorities. Many of the councils took part more than once. 40 Councils took part three times. Many thousands of people participated. They gave us millions of pieces of data to work with The benchmark data is unique and valuable - for DM work in particular it gives a more useful understanding of the work than any previous attempt. but the club rules meant the data could not be publicly released in a form that would identify individual councils The solution – aggregate the data to anonymise the individual councils Before we forget – our memories degrade with time and electronic files are not as permanent as many imagine. Some of the information derived will be used in the PQF
- #3: …and what is not in it Comparatively little on strategic planning and enforcement
- #4: No real surprises here County authorities tend to have considerably fewer planning applications (though perhaps a more complex mix) Districts and unitaries are more similar and most of the data in the report focuses on these types of authority
- #5: This is what spend in an average authority looks like This is districts and unitaries combined You can see that application fees, pre-app fees and other income subsidise a minor proportion of the total spend … but, we are a long way from cost recovery
- #6: This chart shows the percentage subsidy for the total local planning authority cost for the participants in the 2012/13 benchmark The majority of authorities need a subsidy of between 60 and 80% The average subsidy is 68%
- #7: Cost per hour is very consistent between the two different benchmarks 2011 and 2012/13 When you look at what councils are charging for pre-app it would seem very difficult to justify some of those charges. Pre-app is supposed to be cost recovery
- #8: As we all know – application fees do not cover costs There are exceptions but only Major commercial apps provide any significant ‘profit’ Of course councils have very little control over what applications they receive Exception – conditions – councils may want to reconsider how many ‘submission’ conditions they impose knowing that each one costs them around £150
- #9: Yep, we have gone there The infamous150 cases per officer was / is a popular benchmark of local authority performance The traditional measure took the number of PS1/PS2 cases and divided it by the number of planning officers. With good reason, many people thing it is a ‘silly’ number. In our defence, we have used the benchmark data to try to show there is a large range behind the number. It is not a ‘one size fits all’ number
- #10: Yep, we have gone there The infamous150 cases per officer was / is a popular benchmark of local authority performance The traditional measure took the number of PS1/PS2 cases and divided it by the number of planning officers. With good reason, many people thing it is a ‘silly’ number. In our defence, we have used the benchmark data to try to show there is a large range behind the number. It is not a ‘one size fits all’ number
- #11: Our data shows that the average council has a caseload of 144 cases per officer. Slightly below the traditional 150 measure But look at the range There is huge variation between the top and the bottom
- #12: We also chose to derive a new measure Includes all officers doing casework, not just planning officers. Captures a more rounded picture of application processing.
- #13: The range is still big but not quite so big – there is more consistency
- #14: The ‘top’ councils are still significantly higher
- #15: Not surprisingly, authorities that have lots of smaller, simpler applications have a higher cases per officer number. Anything that drives up the time it takes to process an application, will lower your cases per officer number.: Local processes (delegation rate, consultation policy) Environmental factors (constraints, contamination)
- #16: Being big seems to help – larger authorities show well in the cases per officer number 5 of the biggest 10 authorities (by caseload) are in the top 10 in terms of cases per officer Perhaps surprisingly, population density does not seem to be a significant factor
- #17: We asked customers what they were looking for from LPAs Customers were frustrated by poor communication The thing they wanted most was the opportunity to amend their application before a decision was made They wanted access to planning officers both before submission and during the application process.
- #18: If there is one thing clear – one size does not fit all - huge variation Cost Performance Work mix Customer satisfaction The traditional speed of processing national indicators are a very narrow measure. How an authority actually performs has many more dimensions: Customer service Cost of providing the service Value added during the planning application process A large subsidy in a time of deep cuts means LPAs and their customers are at the mercy of Council financial decisions. Many councils seem to give comparatively little priority to customer service.