Ask-a-planorak #2 - Graham Stallwood, Director of Operations at the Planning Inspectorate
Graham Stallwood is a busy man! As the Planning Inspectorate’s Director of Operations (after lengthy stints in senior roles at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Windor and Maidenhead, Chiltern DC and Broxbourne BC and as chair of the RTPI’s Board of Trustees), he’s now tasked with managing the Inspectorate’s response to lock-down, and meeting Robert Jenrick’s recent imperative to get virtual events up and running.
Graham answers 10 questions on the Inspectorate’s activities before, during and (we hope) after lockdown.
NB these questions were asked before (but answered after) the raft of new guidance, legislation and the MHCLG’s Written Ministerial Statement on 13th May 2020.
(1) What steps has PINS taken since you’ve been in post that you think have turned out particularly well?
We made huge strides in clearing older cases and improving turnaround times for many appeals.
The number of open cases fell from over 13000 to around 9300, the median average for planning appeals decided by written representations reduced from 29 weeks to 19 weeks and we implemented the Rosewell Review recommendations, halving the timeframes for deciding planning inquiries to just over 24 weeks on average.
Although we had further to go, this was a huge achievement for the whole organisation. From April we had really exciting plans for the next phase of improving our performance.
(2) Before lockdown turned our world upside down, what was your priority for how PINS operates?
My number 1 priority was reducing the number of cases awaiting decisions and improving the turnaround times for decisions – whilst maintaining the robustness of decisions. I was about to give greater prominence to three other linked workstreams: work around our new digital customer portal, being more consistent to our customers in how we communicate with them and being more consistent in how long it takes to decide cases. These are still important, but will be a bit later in the year because of the COVID-19 work.
(3) I asked Bridget Rosewell about the shortening timescales before lockdown for planning inquiries. What’s your view on how the reforms she’d recommended were working out before lockdown?
They were largely working well in my view, especially the early conference call between the parties and the inspector, the quicker decisions and the greater consistency in decision times. We’re working hard to re-establish those timeframes despite the lockdown.
(4) As you know, the economic consequences of lockdown have already been disastrous both in almost every corner of the public and private sectors. Local government has been hit terribly hard. As has the development industry, and particularly housebuilders. How do you see PINS’ role in facilitating our economic recovery?
Like the rest of the planning and development industry we have a crucial role to economic success across all our work – appeals, local plans, national infrastructure and our other casework. The Written Ministerial Statement issued on Wednesday makes it clear how important a role we play. We’re working really hard to keep all our work progressing. We’ve issued well over 2000 decisions since the lockdown and thirteen local plan letters.
Over the last seven weeks we have implemented changes so that, where inspectors are satisfied they have the evidence necessary to make their decisions, they are deciding cases:
· Through written representations without face to face evidence; and
· On a pilot basis, without visiting the site.
Following the latest government guidance, we have now restarted site visits with social distancing measures and other precautions, and we are asking appellants, councils and landowners to help us with this.
We have also brought forward work on digital examinations, hearings and inquiries planned for later this year. We’ve held our first fully digital hearing and have twenty more digital events planned through to the end of June, with more to come. These will cover appeals, local plans and national infrastructure.
We’ve also been seconding our inspectors to support the wider MHCLG response, mainly supporting the department’s work in local government resilience.
(5) The 28th April 2020 PINS release sets a 6 month target for widespread roll out of digital events for most cases. There have been suggestions that this time-horizon is changing. Are you able to shed light on when the 6 months runs from (now? Or the end of the trial period in June/July?) and whether that is still PINS’ target?
We’re already running digital events and we plan to expand their use rapidly with the learning from the early cases. Within three months we plan to have expanded this across the most common types of cases like planning hearings and inquiries, local plan examinations and national infrastructure examinations, including complex cases. Early experience suggests they take more organising than traditional events until the parties are used to them, whilst there are also statutory lead-in times once organised before the event can start. It’s also important to remember that we are not the only party involved in digital events. We are working with other parties to understand and overcome any barriers they face in running or taking part in digital events.
Our work covers many other different case types, mostly with different regulations and complexities. We are focusing on the common types first as we can’t do everything at once. In the three to six month window we’ll then focus on other types of work such as rights of way inquiries which bring their own complexities to be fully digital.
We were planning to trial digital events later in the year even before the current emergency. We intend this to be part of our operating model after the current situation, so it’s important for us to establish a sustainable model that works for all parties in the process.
(6) What do you think are the most important challenges – for PINS, for LPAs, and for the development industry – that will flow from a further 6 month delay to most appeal hearings, inquiries and local plan examinations?
We recognise our crucial role in the planning system and in supporting the economy, hence why we’re working hard to keep casework moving and avoid delays of that length. We are currently re-programming hearings and inquiries that were postponed following the government’s initial COVID-19 guidance.
But it’s also important not to undermine the trust in the current system by making decisions which are not robust. The planning system has to run well after the current situation as well as helping the nation through it.
(7) Site visits (you must get a lot of questions about this!). PINS are not conducting any physical site visits. Unlike lots of LPAs. So long as we’re all able to go outside to do work which can’t reasonably be done at home (suitably distanced, of course!) why has PINS decided not to re-introduce physical site visits (ed. asked before PINS announced that physical site visits were re-starting!).
Our inspectors travelling around the country, often staying overnight, did not comply with the government’s original COVID-19 guidance. The safety of our employees, their families and customers and protecting the NHS from unnecessary risk was of paramount importance. We stand by that decision.
We recently announced that site visits were likely to restart week commencing 11 May following expected changes to the government’s COVID-19 guidance. With the new guidance now published inspectors are now visiting sites again taking appropriate precautions. We are asking appellants, landowners and local authorities to help us visit sites unaccompanied and provide access to sites with any parties remaining appropriately distanced. Inspectors will be travelling by car, taking other precautions, and will not be staying overnight.
(8) You’ve said that the biggest challenges to making virtual PINS events work are around public participation. You’ll have seen that already over 1/3 of LPAs have already or are soon to make use of the new virtual meeting procedures which involve both public access and public participation. Do you feel PINS would also benefit from new regulations from the MoJ or MHCLG to point the way forward to get to digital events a bit quicker?
It’s been great to see many planning committees running digitally. But the format, length, purpose and public participation in examinations, hearings and inquiries is not the same as planning committees and needs greater experimentation.
Converting our ‘traditional’ events into a straightforward digital equivalent misses an opportunity to reimagine how a digital event should look and feel and how all parties could participate in them. We cannot expect all parties to stare at a video screen for five days in the kitchen in the same way they might sit in an inquiry. There is an opportunity here to improve participation and devise events which both help the inspector get the evidence they need to decide cases and build participation and trust in the process. It would be a lost opportunity if the shift to digital events increased the extent to which decisions simply become a conversation between professional parties.
We’ve been working with MHCLG colleagues on the changes to statute and regulations that could support a digital shift and make it work as part of a long term approach. The changes won’t speed up the change to digital events but will help us to build a new model for the future.
(9) Looking beyond lockdown, you recently explained your view that the future of planning appeals may need to move away from the traditional written reps / hearings / inquiries model toward a mixture of all three, combined with a mixture of in-person and digital events. Can you tell us a bit more about that idea?
My own personal view is that the choice of written representations, hearing and inquiry to decide cases is unnecessarily rigid and ought to be revisited. As part of the Rosewell Review we’ve seen roundtables being used to allow the inspector to explore some matters outside of cross examination where appropriate. But I would like to see that flexibility going much further across all our case types.
I would like to see all cases following the same basic process but with inspectors having the scope to test evidence face-to-face (including digitally) where necessary. In my twenty local government years I sat through many inquiries which only really needed one of the issues explored through cross examination, whereas the rest could have been handled through written representations. Appellants tell me they sometimes request inquiries as they think a more experienced inspector will be appointed, but they would otherwise be happy with written representations, and I see written representations cases which could really benefit from one element being explored through a short hearing. Building in a more fluid approach, combined with digital events, would evolve what we currently have to something more fit for our times and will change some of the current, sometimes perverse, motivations and behaviours which result from the ‘three sizes fit all’ approach.
(10) Also looking ahead, you’ve talked about PINS’ “role in the digital future”. What would you like your legacy at PINS to be in helping it to fulfil that role?
One of my ambitions is for us to take a ‘whole system’ view and re-cast the planning system for a digital world, not just rebuild the old analogue planning system in a digital world. That needs real digital leadership. The Planning Inspectorate has a digital relationship with every local authority in England and Wales so is in a unique position to help achieve that ambition in partnership with others.
Technology has not historically been our strength, but with our employees now using the latest technology every day, virtual and augmented reality being used in appeals, digital events taking place and our new customer portal in live trials with 27 authorities, we have taken enormous strides over the last two years.
Our new digital customer portal will transform the way we do business and the way we communicate with our customers. But if I can take that on one step further and enable appeals to be made by simply clicking a button that says “appeal” without data entry or re-uploading documents then that would be a really strong sign that the whole system is moving in the right direction. The Planning Inspectorate can’t do that on its own – but I can dream.
Stay well, #planoraks.
