Examination of Witness (Questions 480
- 499)
TUESDAY 11 APRIL 2000
MR CHRIS
SHEPLEY AND
MR BRIAN
DODD
Christine Butler
480. What standard practice do you have in circulating
stuff coming from ministers in reply to answers or DETR circulars,
all the things not many of us would know much about? How do you
pick this up? How do you disseminate? Is there a standard procedure?
(Mr Dodd) Yes, there is. Whenever a piece of Government
advice is issued, and indeed whenever a piece of case law comes
along, which is going to be particularly significant in the Rights
of Way field, we will produce an advice note for the Inspectors
and send it to the Inspectors. It has been our practice recently
to make sure when we do produce these advice notes they are also
produced in a form which enables us to issue them publicly, so
the user groups will automatically be sent a copy of the advice
note.
Mr Benn
481. You are confident that everybody receives
it, in other words the information gets to where it needs to get?
(Mr Dodd) I hope so. If it is not getting there, if
there is some administrative error which people want to draw to
our attention they must do so and we will make sure it is corrected.
To the best of our knowledge when we produce these notes they
are sent out to the user groups.
482. What advice does the Inspectorate give
its Inspectors about the weight to attach to draft guidance?
(Mr Shepley) Are we talking about Rights of Way still?
483. No.
(Mr Shepley) More generally, if I can go back a stage,
what Mr Dodd said about Rights of Way applies to all kinds of
Government guidance, of course.
484. Of course.
(Mr Shepley) Inspectors are given guidance on weight,
there are fairly established principles about that. The new PPG
which has been published would be given a very great deal of weight.
The draft document, which has come out for consultation, would
be given relatively little weight. Given Section 54A Inspectors
will understand. We do our best to guide them as to what weight
they should give to all information.
485. Given we have had evidence which expresses
concern about the lack of clarity of some Government policy, do
you think there is a case for guidance on Government policy going
beyond what you described in your evidence as "merely factual"?
(Mr Shepley) We are very careful not to put a spin
on information or advice or guidance which comes from ministers
or from the Department. We do not write to Inspectors and say:
"Paragraph 32 says whatever it says and what that really
means is something else". We would not elaborate ever. It
must stand on its own and the same information must be available
to Inspectors as is available to the parties. We are pretty strict
about that.
486. You would not consider saying "Well,
these are factors that you might wish to take into account in
consideration"?
(Mr Shepley) I think you may have seen some of the
guidance we issue. PPG3 came out recently, we issued that to all
Inspectors, together with a note which drew the attention of Inspectors
to what we thought were the key issues. "You may want to
pay particular attention to the following issues in paragraphs
32 and paragraph 40" whatever it was, we will guide them
in that sense. We will not add to it. We will not say what we
think the sequential test means.
Chairman
487. How did you guide the Government ministers
between the draft and published version? Did you tell them publicly
some of it was not easy to understand?
(Mr Shepley) We are consultees like everybody else.
We do our best to give the Department advice from the Inspectorate's
point of view as to what we think. They may or may not take that
into account.
488. Is that advice publicly available?
(Mr Shepley) I am not sure, I believe so. I think
perhaps you need to check that with the Department.
489. Do you write it on the basis that you think
it will be publicly available?
(Mr Shepley) Yes, we have no problem with it being
publicly available from our point of view.
Mr Benn
490. We are advised you have a training manual
for Inspectors, is that the case?
(Mr Shepley) Yes.
491. Would you have any objection to that being
made publicly available?
(Mr Shepley) It depends what you mean by publicly
available?
492. Put on the Internet to enable people to
access it?
(Mr Shepley) That is possible. Let me explain why
I put a caveat. The document is not secret, there is nothing in
the document we want to hide.
493. Right.
(Mr Shepley) However, publishing it, whether on the
Internet or on paper is a more difficult proposition because we
do not have the resources to make sure the Inspector's handbook
is always up to date and always has the information everybody
might need. It is an internal document—from our point of
view, that does not matter. Inspectors are trained. One of the
first things they are trained in is how to use the handbook, what
care they need to take, how to use it in relation to other guidance
we might have issued and so on. It is only guidance, it is not
rules for the most part. Given that background training, and the
whole way we operate, the handbook is a useful tool for Inspectors
and brings most information together in a single place. I have
some concerns about publishing it, we would have to keep it up
to date completely and that would be a mammoth task.
Chairman
494. A mammoth task to keep it up to date?
(Mr Shepley) Yes.
495. Surely it is essential it is kept up to
date?
(Mr Shepley) No, because Inspectors are given other
guidance, they are used to using other things, how it relates
to PINS notes and other guidance we issue from time to time. We
consolidate that, not very frequently, into the handbook and so
my concern is not that there is anything in the document which
is secret but we should not be relied upon to provide guidance
to the outside world. It is produced in an internal context. It
is useful to the Inspectors, not to other people.
Mr Benn
496. Given you could publish it with precisely
that kind of health warning you have given us as a Committee and
draw the attention of people who might see it to the other forms
of advice you might give to Inspectors, would that not enable
others to be on a level footing in trying to understand the framework
within which Inspectors are working?
(Mr Shepley) You say in trying to understand the framework
within which Inspectors are working, I think it would be helpful
in that respect. We try to do it in many other ways. I think the
danger is people trying to rely on it as guidance. Inspectors
use it together with the planning encyclopaedia and Butterworth's
which are kept up to date by commercial organisations. We do not
have the resources to set ourselves up in competition with them.
We are anxious to be open but not to be an advice service on current
planning advice.
497. It strikes me with a health warning I cannot
see what the difficultly is, as long as that is understood. Would
you have any objection?
(Mr Shepley) As long as that was understood. I would
not want people in inquiries challenging Inspectors on the grounds
they had not complied with paragraph 32 of Chapter 9, which is
another danger I foresee in the way inquiries work.
498. Talking of which, the quality test that
the Inspectorate's casework should be 99 per cent free from "justified
complaint", to what extent do you think that tells us and
the public about the quality of the Inspector's work?
(Mr Shepley) I do not think it is a perfect measure
of quality at all. I do not think anybody would say it was. I
know that efforts have been made to find better targets over the
years and nobody has ever succeeded. What it does do is to provide
a comparison over a period of time, maybe an imperfect measure
but it has been a consistent measure since the Inspectorate became
an Agency. It is possible for the Committee and others to see
how things are changing, whether we are getting better or whether
we are getting worse. Internally we supplement that with other
work that we do on quality, such as the annual survey which you
have already heard about. We do not rely on this entirely as the
only measure.
499. The annual surveys are published?
(Mr Shepley) Yes.
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