Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
DAME MAVIS
MCDONALD
DCB, MR PETER
UNWIN AND
MR NEIL
KINGHAN
12 OCTOBER 2004
Q20 Mr Betts: So the 150 are agencies?
Dame Mavis McDonald: Or they could
be in our big NDPBs, like the Housing Corporation, for example,
or English Partnerships.
Q21 Sir Paul Beresford: What is that
as a percentage of the total staffing level?
Dame Mavis McDonald: About 10%.
Q22 Sir Paul Beresford: One of the confusing
things for anyone on the outside is the result of the changes
internally and the result of the changes of setting staffing out
and the changes within departments. It is very hard to get a grip
on the total staffing level. Do you do any comparisons between,
on a like-for-like basis, '92, '97, 2001 and now?
Dame Mavis McDonald: No.
Q23 Sir Paul Beresford: Is it possible
to do it?
Dame Mavis McDonald: I do not
know how far we would be able to track back what then would have
been the Department of the Environment figures but if the Committee
were interested we could try. We would have to piece out the functions
that were in that office then, the DOE, that are now replicated
in the Office, and I have mentioned Fire but the Neighbourhood
Renewal Unit did not exist in 1991 for example.
Q24 Sir Paul Beresford: We would be interested
to have the figures, but it would be interesting for you for efficiency
purposes, surely? Your 10% reductions on staffing level, what
is that as a total of the budget?
Dame Mavis McDonald: If you look
at the admin budget—
Mr Unwin: Our admin budget is
somewhere over £300 million, and basically we are on a flat
cash admin budget for the next three years. So in real terms that
is about 8%, about £25 million.
Q25 Mr Betts: Just coming back to the
savings in various organisations, the Housing Corporation, the
Planning Inspectorate, with a degree of autonomy how do you ensure
you get 150 savings out of that, or are you simply going to give
more cash reduction and say, "Well, if you can get rid of
the statutory volume you can do it in some other way. It is up
to you".
Mr Unwin: A combination of both.
Their admin budgets are set as part of the grant in aid so it
is the level of that budget that we will achieve some of the efficiency
savings through, but we also ask them for particular plans. As
part of the main efficiency management within government we have
to produce detailed plans on how the efficiency savings are going
to be achieved and that will include our Non Departmental Public
Bodies.
Q26 Mr Betts: On the relocation, we have
had the impression given that lots of jobs are going to be created
out as part of this relocation but it looks from your Department
that there will be some jobs moved out but given also there will
be a reduction of the number of government office jobs as part
of the efficiency savings, in the end there probably will not
be any more people employed in government offices outside in the
regions than there are now?
Mr Unwin: We will be moving out
240 posts before efficiency savings and about 214 after, mostly
to the Government Offices. The Government Offices themselves obviously
will be making some efficiencies within their back Office and
administration costs, but on top of that they will get the increases
relating to the work moving out to the regions. Overall, I would
expect there to be a net increase but that depends on the figures
to be calculated which will be coming out as we develop our plan,
but certainly posts moving out from our office in London will
move more front line posts into Government Offices replacing the
back office posts which they will be reducing through efficiency
savings.
Q27 Chairman: How are the cuts in the
Planning Inspectorate going to work because we have a backlog
of planning? The Ministers made it clear they wanted to speed
up planning; I think most local authorities one way and another
have done quite well, but as I understand it there is a considerable
backlog with the cases that the Planning Inspectorate have.
Dame Mavis McDonald: As you know,
the Planning Inspectorate is effectively a demand-led activity,
so we look at the adjustment of the cash all the time that is
needed against the targets. What Katrine Sporle, the Chief Planning
Inspector, has been doing is a lot of work designed to re-engineer
the processes that they use internally to handle the appeals and
the different kinds of smaller minor cases that they manage to
see if she can get more throughput with the same numbers of staff—
Q28 Chairman: Wait a minute, the same
numbers of staff? I thought you were talking about some of this
reduction in staff coming from the Planning Inspectorate?
Dame Mavis McDonald: It can do,
but that does not mean we cannot offset it with an extra requirement
if the planning appeal load has gone up as quickly as it has over
the last couple of years, and it is up about 35-40% at the moment.
Q29 Chairman: So we are going to have
a cut but actually we are going to have more staff employed there?
Dame Mavis McDonald: Well, I think
we are going to have what we hope is a more efficient way of managing
some of the processes—
Q30 Chairman: Let's just stick with the
staff. What was announced is that there is going to be a saving
in the number of staff employed there. That is what is announced,
but the reality is that if we get more planning appeals more staff
will be employed there.
Mr Unwin: We are reducing by 10%
overall across the Office centre—
Q31 Chairman: I understand that but what
I am interested in is the Planning Inspectorate which was supposed
to be making a contribution to it. What I want to be clear on
is whether this contribution from the Planning Inspectorate is
actually going to be less people in the desk in Bristol, or is
it going to be that because the workload goes up then there will
be more staff there?
Mr Unwin: We have not decided
that yet because we have not broken down the overall 400 posts,
the 10% between headquarters and various agencies and NDPBs, but
in each case the point I wanted to make is that we are making
a 10% overall cut. There are certain areas in the Office where
workload is increasing, on the sustainable communities agenda
and on interaction with local government, for example, and that
has to be accommodated within this overall 10% reduction which
we will be making. So if there was additional pressure on the
Planning Inspectorate for the reasons you say, and there is an
element of that, obviously we will meet as much of that as possible
through additional efficiency but it may be at the end of the
day that the Planning Inspectorate takes less than the average
share of the 10% reduction.
Q32 Mr Betts: So basically it is a wing
and a prayer. You have plucked 10% out of the air, but you have
not even got round to thinking about what it is going to involve.
Mr Unwin: No. We are working out
at the moment a delivery plan and the technical note—
Q33 Mr Betts: You are working it out,
so the commitment to 10% savings comes before you have worked
out how to achieve it?
Mr Unwin: No. We have substantial
plans already for back office savings at headquarters and we are
talking to the agencies about this at the moment.
Q34 Mr Betts: But in terms of the agencies
you have not even got to the point of—
Mr Unwin: We are confident we
can make the 10% figure overall. We have not yet decided on our
business planning round over the next three years. We are about
to do it and that will be the point at which we look at how those
savings are going to be spread across the Office.
Q35 Sir Paul Beresford: Presumably if
the Planning Inspectorate's workload has gone up one of the solutions
is to look at the workload and why. Have you done that? What have
you decided? What are the causes, and what are you going to do
about it on the Planning Inspectorate?
Mr Unwin: We are looking at the
whole planning delivery chain in the Planning Inspectorate and
in Whitehall.
Q36 Sir Paul Beresford: Why are there
more inquiries? Is there a cause?
Mr Unwin: Some of the changes
that have come through in the recent Planning Bill—
Chairman: So is it the Planning Bill
or is it increased prosperity which means that more planning applications
are coming in?
Q37 Sir Paul Beresford: Or more inquiries
called in? More centralisation?
Mr Unwin: There is certainly a
big increase in the number of appeals coming in. I would not like
to speculate on the reason for more inquiries.
Q38 Chairman: But surely if you are looking
at staffing then you would need to know why you have greater staffing
amounts. You have just told us that basically this 10% is a whole
rather than anything based. We have picked out one area of planning
in which we appear to have evidence that you are going to need
more staff rather than less, and you do not know why.
Dame Mavis McDonald: We have.
I think it is a mixture. We have some very detailed plans for
areas within headquarters where we have agreed that we are going
to be saving certain numbers of posts and a quite substantial
amount of cash. We have some knowledge from some of the NDPBs
about their plans and what they will say. The Planning Inspectorate
is particularly difficult because we have to look at the current
potential future to plan within this context. We have not taken
detailed decisions about the Planning Inspectorate but, within
the overall framework of improving the planning system, Katrine
Sporle is already working on some business processing engineering
internally to try and speed their processes; there are features
in the new Planning Act which will help speed up some of the local
development plan framework; and we have been having internal discussions
with Ministers about other types of planning consent and the way
in which we might potentially speed up the handling of those with
the Inspectorate and with the local authorities as well, but we
have not reached final decisions with Ministers on the whole of
that package.
Q39 Chairman: So because the whole of
the Planning Bill is unknown, it means you do not know what contribution
other parts of the department are going to have to make, do you?
Dame Mavis McDonald: We know what
we can do within the defined plans we have currently set out.
We have until 2007 and 2008 to make decisions on achieving the
whole of the 10%, and we anticipate that we will fine-tune some
of that as we get into some of our own business planning round
and the result of some of the work currently in hand at concluding
them. But, as Peter said, we are confident that we can meet the
10% as a whole.
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