Examination of Witness (Questions 360
- 379)
TUESDAY 11 APRIL 2000
MR MICHAEL
FITZGERALD
QC
360. What about the Inspector who has made the
illogical and unclear report in the first place, what happens
to him or her?
(Mr FitzGerald) From the material we have seen they
are involved in the monitoring of that complaint and if that complaint
is found to be justified then that is, as it were, an adverse
mark against that Inspector, yes.
361. Do you think there are any new indicators
that may be used in your assessment?
(Mr FitzGerald) Not by us. By "indicators",
if you are meaning some other way of assessing in any numerical
way then I think the answer is no unless somebody does come up
with a more sophisticated way, such as the CPRE were advising
you on. We would be interested in looking at that.
Mrs Dunwoody
362. It all sounds very comfortable, if you
will forgive me for saying so. "We do not have the time to
do a number of things, we do as much as we can in the time that
is given to us and we assess the quality of the man's mind",
because it will nearly always be a man, women never have their
minds assessed on them being of good mind. Forgive me, it sounds
a little bit, I would hate to use the word incestuous, a little
too close for comfort.
(Mr FitzGerald) I very much hope it is not. I would
be quite surprised if when you asked the Chief Inspector he was
to say that they felt, if you like, cosy with us. We are, I like
to think, perceptive, we are persistent, and if we do not get
the information we want we jolly well say so.
363. It is a bit difficult to be persistent
when you are spending an average of about ten minutes on each
case, is it not? I am by nature persistent and that sometimes
means I keep worrying at things for some years. Persistence is
a moveable feast.
(Mr FitzGerald) I take the point but I do not think
it would be quite right to look at it in terms of ten minutes
only per case.
364. Forgive me, given the numbers of cases
you look at are you comfortable with the time that you are able
to spend because some of these are terribly subjective judgments:
"We have looked at the way the man has made the decision,
we think it is a good decision because the quality of the mind
behind the decision is clear". If you do that on a ten minute
time span you are not spending a lot of time examining the quality
of the intelligence behind the decision, are you?
(Mr FitzGerald) We believe that we are spending enough
time. We are actually quite happy with what we are looking at.
We are able to appreciate it swiftly enough and understand what
the Inspectorate is saying about that decision. If you are asking
me would we feel better if we could look at every single decision—
365. No, I am saying have you, for instance,
said to them "if we did two extra sessions we could cover
even more?" How do you do it, do you do it on a random basis?
(Mr FitzGerald) We started off by examining every
single decision which had excited a justified complaint and assessed
to see whether those complaints were justified and whether the
categorisation between significant and insignificant was justified.
That was a major exercise and that took a lot of time and a lot
of work. We also looked at the ones that had been decided as not
justified. So we looked at a percentage of those. There were 400
and something of those, so we took a percentage of those to see
whether we thought they were properly categorised as not justified.
In the following years after that we did 25 per cent only of those,
we did not do the whole lot.
366. You have taken a base line and you have
not changed the way that you operate from the base line. Have
the complaints gone up or down?
(Mr FitzGerald) They have remained surprisingly static.
They have slightly gone up but I think that is more because there
is a propensity to complain than it is about the quality of the
decisions.
367. So you have not looked at whether the method
of complaining is clear to these people who might be worried about
a particular decision?
(Mr FitzGerald) Yes, we have. We are satisfied that
the mechanism exists to enable people who have a complaint to
register it and it is then duly processed by the Inspectorate.
368. You are never worried about the bulk, the
numbers of cases that you have to deal with and the amount of
time you have to give to them?
(Mr FitzGerald) No. We are satisfied that we are able
to do that sufficiently in the time available to us.
Mr Brake
369. You said that complaints have gone up but
that is because the propensity to complain has increased. What
evidence have you got to support that?
(Mr FitzGerald) None, except that seems to be a logical
conclusion given that the standard of the decision letters read
more or less the same from year to year. In other words, the Inspectorate's
training standards—this is where I pay them some credit—do
indeed produce a product which is consistent. You could say consistent
in producing X number of complaints a year, about one per cent
of justified complaints a year, but that is really all it is,
it is always around one or other side of the one per cent mark.
The reason why it increases at any one time is in more recent
years I believe it is logical that people are being encouraged
to complain more. The Citizen's Charter and the fact the Inspectorate
themselves are becoming more approachable and actually seeking
people to comment upon their work has helped in that. I think
that is a comforting factor myself.
Mr Olner
370. To follow on this theme of questioning.
Are you really happy that a total of 75 out of 1,900 complaints
provide an adequate sample on which to base your assessment of
quality?
(Mr FitzGerald) No, I am not.
371. Is this a random 75?
(Mr FitzGerald) That is a very good point. I am not
at all satisfied with that. We have made it clear from the very
earliest of our Annual Reports that we do not think complaints
is really the right way of assessing quality. It is an assessment
and it has value. It has value because firstly it does identify
whether there are any trends in the Inspectorate that need to
be arrested. At one time there were a lot of complaints about
site visits, for example, so the Inspectorate took that point
and make it clear to Inspectors what they should do on their site
visits and those complaints have gone down. It is useful in that
regard but it does not really tell you very much about the quality
of the decision because the complainants I guess nine times out
of ten—there are statistics on this—are the people
who have, as it were, failed in some planning case or other and
they are more naturally liable to complain than those who have
succeeded. It does not tell you whether the decision is a good
or a bad one.
372. Can I put it to you that the Inspectorate's
Quality Assurance Unit has laundered, to put it mildly, some of
the things that come to you as an unjustified complaint or an
Inspector's planning judgment that could be questionable. Are
you happy with the Inspectorate's Quality Assurance Unit?
(Mr FitzGerald) We are very much on the look-out for
that. I say that because when we were first set up in 1993 there
was a great apprehension about us in the Inspectorate and we found
it quite difficult sometimes in the early days to really get answers
to the questions that we wanted. We persisted with that and made
it absolutely clear that we were determined to have that and were
adverse in our criticisms when we did not. Over the years I am
absolutely satisfied now that the Quality Assurance Unit is completely
open in everything that it gives us and, indeed, answers our questions
very quickly indeed. Whether they launder things, the answer is
they cannot launder in this sense: in so far as one is looking
at complaints we have the whole file, we have the complainant's
file, we have the letters of complaint, we have the whole correspondence.
Mrs Dunwoody
373. But you have got ten minutes for the whole
file.
(Mr FitzGerald) We can read that.
374. You are all speed readers to a man.
(Mr FitzGerald) I am sure, like hon. Members, we are
very quick readers, yes. We have to be. Seriously, some take longer
than others. I do not think it is right to look at it on an average
basis, with respect, because some will take longer.
375. Some might take 15 minutes.
(Mr FitzGerald) Some might indeed take an hour and
we discuss some of them as well.
Mr Olner
376. Have you ever come to a different conclusion
from the Inspectorate's Quality Assurance Unit?
(Mr FitzGerald) Yes, we have.
377. How many times?
(Mr FitzGerald) I do not have the statistics on this
but I would guess probably a couple of times in looking at these
decisions we question the way along the line the QAU has categorised
something either as significant or insignificant.
378. A couple out of 75 out of 1,900 means that
there might be an awful lot getting through that have been wrongly
categorised.
(Mr FitzGerald) I am not a statistician but I think
it is not a bad percentage actually. If you get a consistent message
from 75 out of that, that is not a bad statistic.
Christine Butler
379. How satisfied are you that the PINS' treatment
of complaints remains at a "high standard" in view of
the "significant discrepancies" you discovered last
year in the Inspectorate's assessment of unjustified complaints?
(Mr FitzGerald) That was a point we made last year,
thank you, and indeed as part answer to an hon. Member a moment
ago. That was a bit of a first for us. We had not quite come across
a distinction in that categorisation before and we were slightly
alarmed about it. We raised it directly with the Inspectorate
and we put it in our report. I would regard that as very much
a shot across the bows so that if the QAU is trying to pull the
wool over our eyes in some way we are on to that and we will have
a jolly good look this year.
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