North Northants Council planning review finds backlog of applications, stressed staff and low morale

A highly critical report into the state of NNC’s planning department found that a third of live applications had gone over their time limit.

The review of the department – formed after the four boroughs and county council merged in April 2021 – discovered low staff morale, ageing IT, inconsistent pay and a long backlog of applications.

The authority ordered a peer review by the Planning Advisory Service, carried out by senior officers from other local authorities around the country, to help transform its planning services. Its findings have now been published.

The report said that the ‘period of stabilisation had taken longer than expected.’

The setup of separate planning committees for each former borough as well as one overall strategic committee were said to be ‘perpetuating inconsistency’.

Recommendations included scrapping the committees and redrawing the boundaries ‘not aligned to the predecessor council boundaries.’

The report went on: “Senior officers and members are committed to transforming the planning service. But there is not a clear plan about how or when this will happen.”

Criticism was also made of ‘strained’ relationships between officers and members and some planning staff were said to feel unsupported. Although staff were said to be ‘committed and hard-working’, morale was said to be low.

Some staff reported significant levels of stress and pressure.

The authors also uncovered that a backlog of around a third (609) of the total 1,883 live applications at the end of October were ‘out of time’.

The review showed that the council’s ability to bring in outside funding, such as through the Towns Fund, was good, and that officers had positive relationships with regional planning bodies and some of their parish councils.

But there was also said to be ‘widespread dissatisfaction about a lack of planning enforcement’.

Their report continued: “Like many councils, North Northamptonshire council has a significant number of vacancies in planning and employs a lot of agency staff.. We think there may be a better way of procuring this support.”

Recommendations include levelling-up pay and grading as well as reviewing the current agency staffing system.

The report said there should be a significantly reduced number of planning committees and that householder applications should only go to committee in exceptional circumstances.

Figures show that during the past year, Corby’s planning committee dealt with just 14 applications, with four of their meetings cancelled because there was nothing for them to consider. But in contrast, the East Northants meetings dealt with 42 applications and their longest meeting, in July, lasted nearly four hours and dealt with eight applications.

Former leader of Wellingborough Borough Council Cllr Martin Griffiths (Ind, Irchester) was at the helm when his authority topped the national league table for its speedy planning application decisions back in 2020.

He said:“Having an efficient planning team that delivers on time and sound decisions is absolutely vital to achieving not only housing growth but also the required jobs and economic growth to the whole area.

“Sadly in Wellingborough, in just two years, we have lost a number of the very staff that helped us become the best performing planning authority in the whole country due to many of the issues highlighted in the independent report by PAS.

“We now have planning officers spread far and wide dealing with applications in an area that, not only do they not live in, they seem to lack the indigenous local knowledge that is absolutely vital in building strong communities.

“The report highlights poor officer member relationships and the current system at North Northamptonshire is far too parochial with four regional planning committees, pulling in different directions, and with poor officer member relationships.

“Some elected councillors also seem hell-bent on keeping control and continuing to use planning as some sort of political football. This has to change.”

NNC’s executive will discuss the report at their meeting next week.

The committee will be asked to consider and approve a transformation plan to act on recommendations.

Executive member for growth and regeneration Cllr David Brackenbury (Con, Thrapston) said: “We requested the peer review as it is an excellent way of providing a learning opportunity for the council which is important if we are to benchmark how we are doing at the moment and to get expert advice on how to progress so we can transform the planning service and deliver continuous improvement.

“There were many positive points that the review noted – mainly the committed and hardworking planning staff but there were also several areas where we needed to improve.

“The action plan that has been developed is comprehensive and will be a challenge to deliver but I am confident that we will be able transform the planning function to make it fit for the future. I would also like to thank the Peer Review team for their expert analysis and also would like to thank everyone who engaged in this process.”

Council leader Cllr Jason Smithers (Con, Oundle) said: “The peer review was requested by the chief executive and myself as they are a great tool to garner expert advice from others in the sector so that services can transform in the right way.

“Our planning function is an essential component in driving forward growth in North Northamptonshire so it’s important that it’s developed in a robust and consistent way and I thank the peer team for their helpful and constructive feedback and report.”