Item 7 - Appendix 3
West Dunbartonshire Council · 6 August 2025
Back to Planning Committee — 6 August 2025 and its agenda
Text extracted from the council's PDF. Layout and reading order may differ from the original.
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NPIF Good Practice template Which attributes of a high performing planning authority does this relate to: ☐Attribute 1: The Planning Authority has sufficient resources and skills to maximise productivity ☐Attribute 2: The Planning Authority has a valued and supported workforce ☒Attribute 3: This Planning Authority has embedded continuous improvement ☐Attribute 4: This Planning Authority has sound governance ☒Attribute 5: This Planning Authority has effective leadership ☐Attribute 6: This Planning Authority has a robust policy and evidence base ☐Attribute 7: This Planning Authority makes best use of data and digital technology ☐Attribute 8: This Planning Authority has effective and efficient decision making processes ☐Attribute 9: This Planning Authority has good customer care ☐Attribute 10: This Planning Authority has effective engagement and collaboration with stakeholders and communities ☐Attribute 11: This Planning Authority supports the delivery of sustainable, liveable and productive places ☐Attribute 12: This Planning Authority supports the delivery of consented development West Dunbartonshire Council Title: Culture of continuous improvement and leadership Context Ensuring a culture of continuous improvement and being supported by leadership to identify areas for improvement and empowerment to implement solutions What happened? The service has embedded continuous improvement into everything that we do. As noted in the performance assessment, the service has generally good performance but has areas for improvement and is hampered by inefficient back-office systems. The service has a Chief Planning Officer who is committed to continuous improvement of planning and place outcomes, as well as performance outcomes in terms of certainty, speed and efficiency of decision ITEM 7 - APPENDIX 3
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making. The Chief Planning Officer function is carried out by the service manager for Planning, Building Standards and Environmental Health. Whilst a broad remit, the role provides for significant opportunities to work collaboratively and there is a good degree of synergy within the services. For example, the Technical Support team is a multi-disciplinary team that supports both planning teams and Building Standards, whilst Environmental Health is a key consultee for the planning process. The Chief Planning Officer is supported in this collaborative approach by the individual Principal Officers, Team Leaders and Co-Ordinator's and they are empowered to identify areas of improvement and to work together to achieve this. Individual catch ups take place regularly and meet as a group monthly to discuss wider service issues. This approach extends vertically, both upwards to other Council services, and downwards to individuals and teams within the service. The Chief Planning Officer, whilst not a formal Chief Officer in terms of the corporate structure, supports the corporate leadership team on planning matters and sits on a variety of project boards and has regular catch ups and communications with services across the Council. A recent example of how continuous improvement is embedded into the team was a joint service improvement afternoon that was undertaken by the Development Planning and Place, Development Management, Building Standards and Technical Support teams, facilitated by the service manager. The goal of this day was to hear more about the challenges individuals, teams and the service as a whole faced, what worked, what could be improved and their ideas for change. The format of the afternoon included some fun team building exercises to foster further collaboration across the service. The event highlighted the following: What we do well • Flexible working • Positive and supportive work culture • Endurance under pressure • Embrace change • Make the best of out dated systems • Achieve high quality development Challenges • Not having appropriate IT systems to help us or our customers • Providing good customer service in relation to the website and the planning portal • Failure to attract and retain staff, aswell as delays in recruitment when it is approved Opportunities • In service training and sharing of learning, skills and knowledge • Ensure budgets for known software updates • To make “Service Days” more regular with guest speakers from other services • Collate procedural guidance in a central place (handbook) for all processes • Review processes with increased enterprise usage and future review when IDOX DMS is implemented
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• Explore technology for site visits and dangerous buildings (e.g. drones, 3D cameras) • Present our roles, what we do, and what we do not do, to other services such as housing and the contact centre • Improve the onboarding process at service level • Promote continued progressional development and implement “grow your own” staff supports • Engage more with developers and agents Areas of collaboration The event was collaborative as all planning, building standards and technical support staff attended. Whilst faciliated by the service manager, individual groups discussed the issues and themes and reported back to the wider group. What was the overall result? The event was well received by attendees, noting “the high level of interaction and team building exercises as a bit of fun.” The event was extremely useful for the service manager and team leaders as it highlighted the good work already done or in progress and helped to identify areas for further improvement. The actions and feedback from this event have directly influenced service priorities and the National Planning Improvement Framework Improvement Actions. The event was followed up with a Microsoft Sway document outlining a summary of the event and what had been achieved so far and what was next. Highlights of actions that were noted as being underway at the time included: • Recruitment underway for vacant posts • Supporting officer attendance on the UWS planning course • Review of Enterprise tasks commenced • Early work on the review of the Scheme of Delegation • Review of both delegated and committee Report of Handling templates • New catch-up schedules with line managers • 4 weekly meetings with PBS&EH Manager and Princiapal Officers, Team Leaders and Co- Ordinator's • Progress with Business Case for full IDOX solution • prepatory work to support Civica extraction and IDOX integration • Sharing skills and knowledge events took place with Argyll and Bute and Stirling Council’s
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Lessons learned Please detail here what worked well and what did not work and on reflection what you would do in future under the following headings: Successes Officers felt listened to and it was beneficial to hear about what we do well and for self-identification of where we could improve Challenges Many of the desires of the team require a cost, whether that be a financial cost or staff time cost to implement, which is challenging in the current operating environment. Another challenge arising from the event is to manage expectations on how quickly identified improvements will happen and to ensure that these do not just “sit on a shelf” and to show regularly how improvements are being made, resulting from the event. Some areas of frustration were also expressed for matters that lay outwith the control of the service. Lessons Learned Overall, as the event was well received, it highlighted the determination and desire for change with the team, and it will be rerun in the future. From a leadership perspective, it also reinforced the positive benefit of learning from those that are doing the role and getting their collaborative input on how we could/should change, rather than a top-down approach to service improvement. What contribution will it aim to make towards delivering outcomes? Please tick all the outcomes below that this example aims to works towards. NPF4 ☒Sustainable places ☒Climate change and nature crisis ☐Climate mitigate and adaptation ☐Biodiversity ☐Natural Places ☐Soils ☐Forestry, woodland and trees ☐Historic assets and places ☒Green belts ☒Brownfield, vacant and derelict land and empty buildings
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☐Coast development ☐Energy ☐Zero waste ☐Sustainable transport ☒Liveable places ☒Design, quality and place ☒Local living and 20 minute neighbourhoods ☒Quality homes ☐Rural homes ☐Infrastructure first ☐Heat and cooling ☐Blue and green infrastructure ☐Play, recreation and sport ☐Flood risk and water management ☐Health and safety ☐Digital Infrastructure ☐Productive places ☐Community Wealth Building ☐Business and industry ☐City, town, local and commercial centres ☐Retail ☐Rural development ☐Tourism ☐Culture and creativity ☐Aquaculture ☐Minerals Place and Wellbeing Outcomes ☒Movement ☒Spaces ☒Resources ☒Civic
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☐ Stewardship Contact/ Further details: Michael Mulgrew – Planning, Building Standards and Environmental Health Service Manager Michael.mulgrew@west-dunbarton.gov.uk