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

What we’ll cover

• Costs and subsidy of planning

• Fees

• Productivity

• Customer survey

• Planning Quality Framework

What do councils spend the money

on?

Percentage of LPA cost not covered

by fees and income

• Each vertical line represents a different LPA

• Average subsidy = almost 70% (at the time)

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 (!)

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%

Productivity

• “We are not updating the 150 cases per

officer thing”

Productivity

• “We are not updating the 150 cases per

officer thing”

– In the end, we have (sort of)

Caseload = 144 / case officer

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”

All-in figure is 88 cases per person

All-in figure is 88 cases per person

Work mix

– high numbers of simple applications. Fast track.

Size seems to make some difference

Large authorities = often higher productivity

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

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