Craig McLaren, Scotland’s new National Planning Improvement Champion, issues his call for ideas on what a high-performing planning system looks like and what impact it has.
I took up position as the Scotland’s first National Planning Improvement Champion in September. A key area of my work is to monitor the performance of planning authorities and provide advice to them (and others considered appropriate) about what should be improved and how. This will involve establishing a new, robust, self-assessment based performance management model for planning authorities and a reporting and monitoring process that supports them to identify areas for improvement. I will then work with them to address these.
Key to this is new approach to performance and improvement is agreeing what a successful, high performing planning service looks like and what impact it has. I believe that this will need to be framed around the planning system’s ambitions to enable the delivery of sustainable, liveable, and productive places, which in turn relies upon planning services working effectively and efficiently and users being able to engage constructively with the system and the service. The often-contested nature of the planning process means that there are a range of organisations and people as stakeholders, often with differing perspectives and views on what constitutes success. This makes it particularly important to ensure that these voices can contribute to the discussion on what constitutes good performance.
Given this I have initiated a call for ideas to find out what people’s ambitions are for planning where I am asking you to answer the following questions:
- What are the outcomes we need the planning system to deliver to have impact?
- What makes a high performing planning authority?
- How can we measure this?
This will aim to help to inform recommendations that will be made to the High Level Group on Planning Performance which is jointly chaired by Scottish Government and COSLA, with the remaining members comprising Heads of Planning Scotland; the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives; the Key Agencies Group; the Society of Lawyers and Administrators in Scotland; and the Royal Town Planning Institute.
I want this to be a positive and constructive conversation focussing on what you think will work in the future. So join the conversation through sending your thoughts on the three questions above to craig.mclaren@improvmentservice.org.uk me by Thursday 30 November, engage in the debate on X/ Twitter by tagging @CraigMMcLaren and using hashtag #PlanningAmbitions and keep an eye on www.improvementservice.org.uk
Craig McLaren is the National Planning Improvement Champion in the Improvement Service and can be contacted on craig.mclaren@improvementservice.org.uk or on X (formerly Twitter) at @CraigMMcLaren