Managing excellent planning services (MEPS)

Update at June 2010

After a successful launch the managing an excellent planning service project has been incorporated into a joint venture with CIPFA called the planning service benchmarking club. MEPS is now closed to new authorities, although we will continue to support those groups who have already started.

Find out more about the Planning service benchmarking club.

The MEPS programme helps local planning authorities create useful, comparable information about the real costs of providing their service. This information can then be used as the basis for making lasting improvements. This process will put you on the front foot and help you plan for budget cuts in way that lets you maintain service quality.

We have taken a set of recognised tools, templates and guidance and adapted them for the planning service. We've made them available in a community of practice for free.

These tools and the MEPS programme will provide you with meaningful and relevant information at a level of detail that supports more informed decision making. MEPS supports well-informed targeted responses to issues with cost and performance, rather than arbitrary or unfocused cost cutting.

Read more about MEPS below.

• Whole service approach
• Costing the service - understanding resources
• Performance
• Benchmarking
• Change
• Councils doing it themselves
• MEPS participants talk about why we need to move beyond NI157
• Contact
• Aligned programmes

Whole service approach

MEPS recognises that councils need to consider the whole service even when making decisions on one aspect of it. MEPS therefore covers the whole planning service:

1. plan making
2. application handling
3. compliance and delivery

The programme engages with heads of service or functional equivalent. Because some of the content is quite technical and requires access to the detail of back-office processes, they may need the support of experienced and technically skilled colleagues.

Costing the service - understanding resources

This is based on the time staff spend delivering each aspect of the service. Costs are allocated based on total staff salaries and any fixed costs (e.g. legal, call centre). This is based on an approach called activity based costing (ABC) which asks:

• What does your service cost to deliver?
• How does this relate to work volumes and types?

Performance data

MEPS takes data directly from your office systems and staff and turns it into sets of graphs and simple reports.

The focus is to:

• move beyond NI157 - how are we handling applications from the customer's perspective?
• share good practice in plan making - what are we trying to plan for, why, and how? Is our approach the most effective?
• have an effective and proportionate approach to compliance - demand-led and proactive approaches to enforcement and feedback.

Sample graphs

Average application handling times including validation (2005-2009) for three councils:

Householder applications plotted individually for three councils:

Benchmarking

MEPS encourages authorities with a similar profile to work together to compare information in benchmarking ‘clubs’. Benchmarking provides another crucial layer of evidence to support decision making and good practice. As of April 2010, there are 12 benchmarking groups operational across England.

Change

MEPS supports targeted rather than arbitrary or unfocused cost cutting, change or re-engineering. Where change is needed, MEPS completes the circle by supporting this in a focused, costed and well managed way. The programme looks at:

• Does anything actually need to change? Learning from the benchmarks.
• Learning from other authorities' attempts to deliver cashable savings.
• Understanding more about how your staff resources are being used and getting the evidence to challenge top slicing of planning budgets.
• Thinking about the future – how will development management be delivered.
• Methods and process.

Councils doing it themselves

MEPS is designed to be delivered by councils themselves without outside help. The tools, processes and support are all available free of charge. Training requirements for the costing and performance parts are minimal. We will also organise and cover the costs of SPRINT training for benchmarking groups.

The SPRINT method for change

The SPRINT method is a combination of systems thinking and business process improvement techniques. It was developed at Salford City Council. We are recommending it to councils where there is no methodology for undertaking change in place. The SPRINT training also offers an opportunity for participants in the benchmarking groups to start working together.

Watch a video interview with Ewen Locke and Barrie McKinnon of Salford City Council where they discuss SPRINT:

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Read a transcript of this video interview 
More information on Sprint - on the Sprint website 

MEPS participants talk about why we need to move beyond NI157

We talked to Ed Watson, Assistant Director of Planning at the London Borough of Camden and a pilot authority in the MEPS programme about what he's got from being a pilot participant and what he saw as the next steps for his council.  We also spoke with Gareth Jones, Development Control Manager about what benefits he saw a different approach to looking at planning performance would bring.

Transcript and alternative formats

• Read a transcript of this video.
• Download a Quicktime Movie version of this video (18MB). 

More information

More information is available in the MEPS Community of Practice (CoP).

• Register - on the Communities of Practice (CoP) website
• Sign-up for regular updates - on the CoP website
• Introduce yourself in the forum - on the CoP website

Aligned programmes

This programme is an evolution of work already developed by others and tailored to a  planning context. This work includes:

• NPIP: the national process improvement project
• Esd toolkit: the cost architecture model
• The public sector business process improvement model  
• Project management support for local development frameworks 
• Leadership academy: engaging councillors in the place-shaping agenda