Agenda item

The Committee considered the Audit Wales report relating to the review of the Planning Service of Carmarthenshire County Council.  Audit Wales undertook the review of the Council’s planning services as their Assurance and Risk work had identified the service as a potential risk.

The assessment sought to answer the question: Is the planning service meeting its own objectives, and supporting the Council in the delivery of its overall objectives?

Alison Lewis of Audit Wales advised the Committee that Audit Wales had found significant and long-standing performance issues in the planning service that needed to be urgently addressed to help support delivery of the Council’s ambitions.

Audit Wales came to this conclusion because:

·         the Council’s current arrangements for determining major planning applications needed strengthening to help it achieve its regeneration ambitions;

·         long-standing, significant performance issues in development management and planning enforcement were undermining effective service delivery; and

·         the Council needed to urgently review its performance and service improvement arrangements for its planning service to better serve its customers.

The report included 17 key recommendations for the Council to address.

Audit Wales advised the Committee that it was pleasing to note how the Authority had accepted the recommendation and had taken action to resolve the issues identified.

The Interim Head of Planning provide the Committee with an update on the timeline of events and progress on actions against the key 17 recommendations.  A breakdown of the impact of the actions on performance was also provided and included:

·         48 major project applications approved resulting in the creation of 212 new full time and 65 new part time jobs. Additionally safeguarding 300 jobs.

·         Of the 847 undetermined planning applications identified, 666 remained with 296 within the 8-week target for determining applications.

·         At the time the Intervention Board commenced there had been 955 enforcement cases not dealt with.  This had reduced to 868 cases.

It was noted that progress would not have been possible had it not been for the staff responding to the interventions and change.

The following questions / observations were asked in relation to the report: -

·         It was stated that the report highlighted huge failings and that the Committee should review the risk register.

The Head of Revenues and Financial Compliance confirmed that the Corporate Risk Register would be brought to the next Committee meeting.  It was advised that the register had already been reviewed by CMT and that additional risks had been accepted.

·         Asked if the Committee could be advised of future strategic reviews to enable the Committee to be involved earlier on in the process. It was agreed that this would be considered further by the Corporate Governance Group. 

·         Asked if the mitigations that had been put in place were sustainable and how could the situation be prevented from happening again.

The Interim Head of Planning advised that it was sustainable. It was acknowledged that there were staffing challenges and that this was across the whole of Wales.  The Director of Environment advised that a wider piece of work was required to review how Performance Management was undertaken.

·         It was suggested that as the risk register was sometimes difficult to read an exception report should be provide instead and that a quarterly progress report should be provided to the Committee detailing the progress made against the 17 identified recommendations.

UNANIMOUSLY RESOLVED to:

5.1.1    note the findings of the Audit Wales report.

5.1.2    note the Carmarthenshire County Council response and action plan provided to Audit Wales on July 30th, 2021.

5.1.3    provide the Governance and Audit Committee with a quarterly progress update report.