Agenda item - Chair's Communications

53.1    Last week, as part of the Local Government Association’s Planning Advisory Service, I was one of a team of peer mentors asked to gather data and then recommend changes in process, for a Local Planning Authority elsewhere in the country. This LPA was struggling and was brave enough to ask for help.

Not only did this prove to be a really rewarding experience for me personally, and, I hope, beneficial for the recipient LPA, but it also helped demonstrate just how far the planning service in B&H has come in recent years.

In was only five years ago, in 2016, that B&H called on the services of the LGA PAS to help us identify how to reform our service, which was, at the time, under enormous pressure.

The change from a recipient authority to one where the Chair of Planning Committee is asked to help out a peer authority, is dramatic and extremely rapid. This speaks volumes for both the PAS process, and B&H’s planning service who were brave enough to ask for help and wise enough to implement that help once it was forthcoming.

I’m afraid that I personally, can claim virtually none of the credit for this. That belongs primarily to all the Officers and secondarily to those Members, past and present, involved in the process. I won’t do a roll-call, but you know who you are. Many thanks.