WHY THE
PLANNING INSPECTORATE
HAVE NOT
MET THEIR
TARGETS
The Department would like to provide this further note to the
Committee on why the Planning Inspectorate have not met their
targets in response to Dr Whitehead's question 309.
19. At paragraphs 307 to 309 of the transcript for 30 June
1998, Dr Whitehead asked a series of questions about the performance
of the Planning Inspectorate compared with key performance indicators.
Commenting on the overall performance since 1994-95, Dr Whitehead
observed that the Inspectorate was lagging behind the timeliness
targets that have been established and asked why.
20. The main reasons that the Planning Inspectorate has not
met all its targets is a substantial and largely unforeseen increase
in its workload. While the volume of planning appeals received
has declined slightly in the 5 years from 1992-93, the volume
of development plans, as measured by the number of objections
made, has expanded 3-fold during the same period from an average
of 521 representations per plan in 1992-93 to 1,601 in 1996-97.
21. As a result, an activity which consumed 17 per cent of
inspector resources in 1994-95 had grown to 32 per cent by 1995-96.
This bulge in development plan work derived from new Local Plans
and Unitary Development Plans made necessary by the introduction
of the Plan-led system in 1992. The bulge is now behind us, but
it is likely that between 20 and 25 per cent of inspector resources
will in future need to be invested in development plan work to
keep them up to date.
22. This step change has inevitably caused other services
which the Inspectorate provides to be squeezed. The Inspectorate
recruited 31 new inspectors in 1996 and a further 19 in 1997.
It takes around nine months to recruit and a further 18 months
to train thoroughly each inspector such that the impact on handling
time and other targets takes time to work through.
23. Nevertheless, the out-turns for the Inspectorate's appeals
casework were a lot better in 1997-98 than in the previous year
and are well on the way to meeting new and demanding targets by
1998-99, the current year. This is shown in the following table:
