To receive an update on the review of the Planning Service Action Plan.

(Note:  The Director of Place, Assistant Director Planning, Housing and Climate Emergency and Cabinet Member for Infrastructure, Environment and Culture have been invited to the meeting for this item.)

The Cabinet Member for Infrastructure, Environment and Culture, Assistant Director of Planning, Housing and Climate Emergency and Director of Place provided the background to the review of the Planning Service and highlighted some of the actions being taken, as set out in the submitted papers, and responded to questions in relation to:

·                     the impact if the Planning Service does not improve and if it could be placed in special measures by the Government – this was not likely to happen as this was based on performance of major applications and due to the use of the extension process this was not currently shown and also appeals which the Council performed well on;

·                     where the Cabinet Member and officers saw the Planning Service in the next 12 to 18 months – this was a busy period with lots of applications coming forward from the TDA, Torbay Hospital, South Devon College and there was a need to ensure that this was properly resourced.  They were putting in place a number of measures to improve communications both internally with other departments and Councillors and externally with agents and applicants, this included officers giving a ‘heads up’ of upcoming controversial applications to Councillors to help them respond to constituents and would require a cultural change within the Team;

·                     the importance of continued Member Development for the Planning Committee Members – a training session was being held the following week on housing delivery and supply and a number of modular sessions were being developed on key areas such as drainage and flooding, heritage, and Members were attending Local Government Association webinars to gain further knowledge on areas such as climate change;

·                     the acknowledgement that there were issues with the Planning Service and a need to take action to improve this and concern around lack of progress on some projects and poor communication – officers have large caseloads which had caused a backlog of cases, the Team does not always receive the necessary paperwork on time and some of the officers are struggling with working from home and not being able to access the peer support they would normally receive when working in the office, this had impacted on the timescale for dealing with applications, this needed to be addressed and additional temporary resource together with additional resource funded by the NHS and options working with the TDA should help to improve this.  It was noted that options had been explored previously with Plymouth City Council and other authorities for a shared planning service but that this had not worked out;

·                     the impact of the Inglewood appeal and how the Torbay Local Plan had been underperforming and failing to deliver the anticipated new homes for a number of years, partly due to the linkages to new jobs, and the process for reviewing the Local Plan and numbers of new homes needed – each year officers check the effectiveness of policies but no formal review had been undertaken until the current light touch review of the Torbay  ...  view the full minutes text for item 31.