Issue - meetings

To advise the Regulatory Committee of performance statistics on Development Management, Building Control and Planning Enforcement.

The Committee considered a report, previously circulated, which set out statistics relating to development management and building control since the last meeting.

• The Chair asked Marc Dorfman to comment on the recent announcement by Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, in the House of Commons. Mr Dorfman reported that Mr Pickles had originally named Hackney as the worst-performing Local Planning Authority in England, and had later corrected this to Haringey. This was on based on the criterion relating to performance for determining major applications within a 13-week time-frame, for the year 2011/12. Mr Dorfman reported that performance for 2012/13 was improving, with 2 of 4 major applications so far determined within the target.
• Mr Dorfman outlined some of the major applications for 2011/12, which included several very large and complex schemes, some applications which had only missed the target by days and some where there had been difficulties getting the s106 agreement signed, but he acknowledged there were some schemes which could have been better managed. While all of these applications could have benefited from a more efficient approach,  it was noted that some were always going to take longer than 13 weeks to determine, on account of their complexity.
• Mr Dorfman advised that performance in respect of appeals and approvals was positive, and that the service had introduced the Design Panel, more design assessments, more consultation, including pre-application discussions involving applicants and local residents, and was looking at the introduction of performance monitoring and management.

• The Committee thanked Mr Dorfman for his outline. It was acknowledged that, while the circumstances of the announcement could have been better, and the selection of the specific criterion on which it was based clearer, Haringey received relatively few major applications compared with some other boroughs, and performance on determining these within the 13-week target had not been acceptable.
•  Cllr McNamara asked whether it was the case that the Leader and Cabinet Member had been in possession of inaccurate information when they had challenged the DCLG’s figures; Mr Dorfman responded that the information on which the Secretary of State’s announcement was based had not been in the public domain at the time when the announcement had been made, and it had taken time to obtain the data from the DCLG in order to advise the Leader accordingly. It was agreed that a letter should be written to the Cabinet Member on behalf of the Committee to clarify what information he was provided with in order to respond to the Secretary of State, and whether this needed to be corrected at any point subsequently. In response to the direct question of whether the Cabinet Member had been provided with incorrect information at any point, Mr Dorfman replied that this was not the case.
• The Committee asked about the reasons behind the disappointing performance with regards to the determination  of major applications within 13 weeks. Mr Dorfman advised that in 2010/11 there had been very few major applications being submitted, and he  ...  view the full minutes text for item 70