Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I welcome Judith Andrews, acting deputy secretary for climate planning and public transport; Rosemary Daly, director of regional planning, governance and legislation; and Fiona McGrady, from regional planning, governance and legislation.

Are members content that the evidence be recorded by Hansard?

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Thank you for joining us at the Committee today. We appreciate your time. This is a very important issue, and the Committee is keen to look into it. We have the written evidence that you provided to the Committee. I invite you to speak to the matter for up to five minutes. The floor is yours. Thank you.

Ms Judith Andrews (Department for Infrastructure): Thank you, Chair. I will hand over to Rosemary Daly to address the Committee with our opening remarks. She is the director of regional planning, governance and legislation.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. Thank you.

Mrs Rosemary Daly (Department for Infrastructure): Good morning, Chair and members. Thank you very much for the opportunity to update you on the ongoing work to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our regional planning system. As Judith said, I am the director of regional planning, governance and legislation, and I am joined by Judith and Fiona to make the presentation.

The Minister and the Department recognise how important planning is in protecting the environment, shaping local communities and, of course, developing our economy. It is important to acknowledge just how complex planning issues are, how challenging those often are to overcome and the implications of that for the delivery of quality and speedy planning decisions. The reality is that, in today's planning space, those challenges will only increase, given the many complex considerations that relate to the protection of the environment and our obligations to meet and respect climate change.

As members are aware, the transfer of the majority of planning functions to local government in 2015 was the biggest change to government here in over 40 years. At the same time, the planning system was fundamentally reformed to replace the previous unitary central government system with a new two-tier system, resulting in the newly formed councils becoming responsible for preparing the local development plans (LDPs), determining over 99% of planning applications and taking appropriate enforcement action when required.

In addition to the challenge of implementing a completely reformed system and the bedding in of transferring the decision-making role to local elected representatives, the period has been characterised by significant uncertainty and challenges, including three years without Ministers, the implementation of a new planning IT system and, of course, the global pandemic. Despite that, the planning system has continued to function, with, on average, 11,500 applications a year processed over the past five years. To add to that, a significant number of those applications have been approved, with an approval rate of 98% for majors and 95% for locals.

To date, five councils have adopted their local development plan strategies, and one council has a direction to adopt. The Department continues to work closely with councils to bring forward the remaining development plan documents.

Of course, the planning system can do much better in delivering for people, the environment and the economy. That has been recognised by all stakeholders in recent years and highlighted in various reports. In response to that challenge, the Department, in collaboration with local government, given the shared leadership role of the two-tier system, developed a planning improvement programme (PIP) comprising a suite of actions across key thematic areas, including policy and legislation, local development plans, development management, performance and engagement. Significant progress has been made through the actions in the programme, including legislation to enable the validation checklists to come into force; continuing, through linked actions, to improve the effectiveness of the plan-making system; and undertaking other consultations on and reviews of development policy and legislation with the aim of streamlining and improving processes.

Integral to improving the planning system is the role of the statutory consultees. Ongoing work with the Department and local government has been conducted through the planning statutory consultee forum (PSCF). Significant progress has been made through the forum and the individual efforts of statutory consultee bodies, which has resulted in progressive improvement in the performance of statutory consultees. During the first quarter of 2024-25, 80% of statutory consultations were responded to on time, meaning within 21 calendar days, with local application responses reported at 81% and major applications reported at 64%. The figures represent the highest quarterly rate reported across the series since reporting began and an increase from 74% in the previous period.

The Department has made it through to the final stages of the interim public-sector transformation board with its bid to support the delivery of planning functions and responsibilities. It is intended, if the bid is successful, that the funding will be used to appoint persons to undertake hearing report work that the Planning Appeals Commission (PAC) has been unable to progress. Hopefully, that action will assist in relieving a key bottleneck in the system caused particularly by delays in hearing processes.

The Department and councils are committed to the process of continuous improvement. The Department is working on the next phase of the improvement agenda in collaboration with local authorities and will focus on key areas of action with the most potential to positively impact on the system's performance. That includes looking at evidence-based analysis of planning authority practice and procedures to best inform opportunities for support, shared learning and best practice.

The collaboration work is about addressing issues that generically and individually impact on performance across the 12 planning authorities, including DFI, with the aim of moving the planning and support staff away from managing bureaucracy towards spending more time delivering social, economic and environmental outcomes for our society. An important outcome of the work will be to develop a new planning performance improvement framework to increase transparency and accountability in planning authority performance on the basis of qualitative and quantitative analysis, indicators and attributes.

We also need to ensure that our planning system is sustainable in the long term. We will work together to promote the positive value of planning and protect the well-being of those working in the sector in order to ensure that qualified and skilled people can be attracted to and retained in the profession. That will involve working with education institutes to consider graduate trainee and apprenticeship programmes and identifying skills gaps, training needs and other strategic workforce challenges.

The Minister has made it clear that, in his view, planning is a collective issue and all stakeholders must play their part in delivering the necessary changes and improvements.

Chair, that concludes my opening remarks. We are happy to take questions.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Super. Thank you. That was dead on five minutes. I appreciate that. Hopefully, that trend will continue throughout the meeting. That is a reminder to members when it comes to questions as well.

Thank you. In the written evidence that you provided to the Committee — you said this in your opening remarks as well — you state:

In your written evidence, you go on to list some of the Department's key achievements in planning. To be honest, I am not sure that I would call them "achievements", because I have not seen the fruit of them on the ground. In the Department's view, what needs to happen, on top of what you have listed to the Committee, to improve planning in Northern Ireland?

Mrs Daly: The starting point is that, when there is change and new processes are brought in, it takes time to deliver that change. To make changes, we have to buy in the cooperation of all the stakeholders.

I will use the validation checklists as an example. They have been through the process of consultation and engagement with stakeholders, and the relevant legislation is due to come into effect on 1 April 2025. In addition, a guidance note has been formed in the background and delivered to all councils. There has been stakeholder engagement with the Planning Appeals Commission on how the process should work. That is a very important part of the process, because it will improve the quality of applications coming into the system, which will benefit everybody who works in the system, including statutory consultees and planning officers, and will be more transparent for the public, because they will have more detail available to consider when they look at applications. That process is under way. It is in a good place. The legislation is a key part of that, and the guidance is another part. We have delivered training with statutory consultees and heads of planning. Some councils have already gone out to consultation. All councils will bring in validation checklists; they are coming into force. A lot of work has taken place to get to a point where all councils have all signed up and said, "OK, we will do our validation checklists".

That was an example of one change. Members will be aware of another change that is coming in relation to the Planning (Development Management) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2015. Those regulations are the legislation that gives the public and councils advice on how to deliver development management: the processing of applications. We are undertaking a similar process in relation to that. We went out to consultation. Members will be aware that we produced a report of the findings, which is with the Committee. That will, hopefully, result in legislative change.

As the Committee knows, it is important that we do not make change just for the sake of it, that we consider everything thoroughly and that, when we make changes, they are the most effective and we get them right. That is where we are. We are looking at where the existing legislation can be improved. That, essentially, is one of the backbones of the planning improvement process for which the Department has responsibility. Even to make that change to legislation, we have to make value judgements as to whether that change will have the most impact on the system, because we appreciate the time that it takes to get all the stakeholders on board and the time that it takes with you.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Are you confident that that legislative change will happen in this mandate?

Mrs Daly: The legislative change relating to the validation checklists has happened.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Yes.

Mrs Daly: I am confident that the work on the development management regulations will happen, because we are at an advanced stage with that. We may have an opportunity to look at how best to deliver that efficiently and with expediency; we are looking at that. I am confident that that certainly should come forward.

I will explain: the review of the development management regulations is looking at where the thresholds of development sit in the system for local applications and major applications, each of which has different processes and processing timescales. Some of that has thresholds for the types of development that fall into each category. That is an area that we have to look at closely, and, as I said, to get right so that the regulations are fit for purpose going forward. We do not want to be in a position, as the development world advances, of having to look at that again in five years' time. We want it to be robust and effective, but we are confident that the legislation will come through in this mandate.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Do you accept that there is, perhaps, still a silo mentality in planning?

Mrs Daly: I agree. That is why we are keen to get in and work closely with the councils in particular. They have governance over 99% of the planning decisions in the system.

Recognising that there are issues in some councils, we have undertaken a process of individual engagement with each council. Some councils are performing really well; others have issues. The engagement is identifying those issues and determining how we can take them forward to cause the most effective change that will support them.

I talked about resources: the resources piece is a key area, which is a problem for some of the councils. We are keen to look at that, as a collective of the Department and councils, to see how they can skill, resource and ensure the sustainability of the system by bringing in lots of new people and promoting the profession of planning so that it is an attractive career for people in the councils or in any part of the sector for that matter.

Ms Andrews: If I may come in, Chair, I will build on what Rosemary has said. The planning improvement programme has been ongoing for about two years, and there has been a lot of diagnosis. There has been a reset and refocus, and we have tried to take a more strategic view of the whole planning system. As Rosemary said, part of that involves working with councils. We call it "collaborative diagnosis". We have lots of facts and figures, but, again, it is about understanding the different nuances linked to the councils that are behind all that.

As Rosemary also said, we take a collaborative approach to resourcing, because there are resourcing issues not just in the Department but across the councils. It is about making sure that the whole planning system is resourced appropriately to deliver what is required. Another angle to that is financial sustainability. We are taking a wide view. The Department, councils, the PAC, statutory consultees and those who make applications through planning agents are all involved in the process. We need to look at the costs of delivering a high-quality, efficient and effective service. That is where our focus is moving to.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Before I move on to other members, I want to make a point about timescales and the delays in the planning system. I hear about those constantly as an MLA when people talk about investment in Northern Ireland. It feels as though we have overcomplicated the system. In other jurisdictions, you can get planning applications through in about 15 weeks; here, you are looking at years, potentially.

Let us look at councils' local development plans. To date, six of the 11 councils have adopted plans. In my view, it is a failure that we have not been able to see those local development plans move forward in such a long time. There does not seem to be any penalty for that: it seems to go on for ever and a day. Why is that? Why are we still in that situation?

Mrs Daly: Let us take development plans. I go back to the point that the background information to development plans is multifaceted. Six plans have come forward, and the Department has processed those, along with the PAC at inquiry stage. The timescale is down to, on average, one and a half years. That is a real result for the system.

The backdrop to that is the preparation of the plan. In a previous life, I held a public inquiry into a plan, and the volumes of technical information and documentation that have to be put forward to support the approach in the plan make that process intensive for councils. It is labour-intensive and costly for them. The councils are thorough. To date, all six plans have been adopted. The PAC has not declined any of them or said that they are not sound. That is a good indication of the efforts that have been put in so far in getting those across the line.

Different issues factor into why the other plans have not come forward to public inquiry. We are alert to that at this time. Yet again, we are looking across at other jurisdictions to see how we can refine the process. We are not on our own in that. There are a number of factors. The timing of the legislation was difficult, in that it was just as we were coming into the pandemic. There are resource difficulties, and councils have to understand that they make the plans now, not central government. How do councils want to shape that plan? The plan has to sit within the layers of other documents on the council's objectives and aspirations. It is about getting everything to line up.

There is a lot of background work, and it is a costly and time-consuming process. We are alert to that. Going forward, in the next phase, improvements to the local development plans are key areas that we want to work on to streamline that system even more. The process relating to the inquiry part and the part where the plan seems to land with the Department is effective, but, again, we accept that it can be streamlined. We are alert to that, and we will work hard to see how we can best deliver that part of the process.

Ms Andrews: The Department plans to intercede in that LDP process. As Rosemary mentioned in her opening remarks, we have made a bid to the transformation fund for funding to set up some independent examiners. They would, effectively, take over the independent examination end of LDPs. That should take some pressure out of the system going forward. They will have a wider remit for public inquiries. That should go some way to assist with getting LDPs approved more quickly.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Thank you. I move now to the Deputy Chair.

Mr Stewart: Thank you very much, folks, for coming along today and for your evidence so far. I echo the Chair's comments: there is a general frustration with the planning system. A small, non-controversial application that has delegated authority at local council goes through well with never a problem, but, invariably, an application that could have regional significance and economic impact drags through the system. The people behind that application feel that the process is totally futile and often end up giving up and taking their investment elsewhere. No doubt, you are doing what you are doing because that has been identified.

I want to pick up on the local development plans. It is lamentable that, 10 years on from the review of public administration (RPA), almost half of councils still do not have an LDP. I was on a council in 2014 and was part of the transition to the new council, and it was started then. How come, a decade on — 10 years — we still have councils that have not done those? Where are the remaining five in the process after 10 years? Surely, they must be close to coming to fruition. That is my first question.

Mrs Daly: Obviously, the responsibility for plan-making lies with the councils.

Mr Stewart: I appreciate that.

Mrs Daly: Each council has a different interest as to whether they want to get their plan fast-tracked. There are a number of reasons. I cannot speak on their behalf about what their reasons are; I can only have an overview.

I have just explained to the Chair that there is a lot of complex information and that the process is costly and resource-intensive. That is going on at the same time as they have to resource planning decisions in that context. At the moment, councils are working to plans that were implemented by the former Department of the Environment (DOE), so some of them may not want to bring one forward: maybe they feel that they have sufficient supply, or maybe they are content with what the planning document says. Inevitably, that does not get over the hurdle that plans are not being produced. We can only work with the councils to encourage them to bring them forward. The Department does a lot of work on looking at aspects of the plan to ensure that, when they come to inquiry, the process is pretty streamlined and efficient, as I have just explained.

Again, it is about understanding that councils are entirely responsible for their local plan. That is a benefit of the system: it is much better when councillors and local people can shape their areas. They understand the issues around housing and employment, and they have a say over what land should be developed. Much of the first five years of the process will be spent collecting evidence, as was the case for the councils that have brought forward their plan, because, when you go to a public inquiry, your plan is tested on the soundness of the evidence. Therefore, it is about making sure that the evidence is robust. That takes time and, again, depends on the resources and priorities of that council.

That is all that I can say, because that part of it is not in our gift.

Mr Stewart: I appreciate that. Was the target not that they were supposed to have them completed by 2019?

Mrs Daly: In an ideal world, possibly.

Mr Stewart: It is over five years later, and some are still not any further on. I take you back to the point that, clearly, there are reasons for those variables. Is it because, potentially, some councils are not financing their planning departments through the rating system, investing enough money in them and prioritising the need and the output of planning? They were due to finish the plans in 2019, and we are now in 2025. It is fair to say that they have missed the target. If that was your homework, you would not get a good score on it.

Ms Andrews: The LDP process sits outside the planning system.

Mr Stewart: I appreciate that, but it is an integral part of it.

Ms Andrews: There is no funding of it through, for example, fees. That is one of the bigger questions for the financial sustainability piece. Obviously, the LDP process supports the whole planning process, and we need to look at that and recognise it. Ultimately, it is down to councils and their prioritisation of resources when it comes to putting those plans through. They are juggling them with planning requirements and other wider delivery functions.

Mrs Daly: We echo your concerns about the fact that the plans have not been delivered at this stage. That is exactly why we are taking a fresh look at how the process can be streamlined to make it much more effective and efficient. We are alive to the concerns that you have raised. We are at the point of again looking across at other jurisdictions to identify how to do it better.

Mr Stewart: I have two more points to make, if I may, Chair. When it comes to statutory consultee performance, around 80% responded on time. What action is being taken to increase that percentage and push us towards 100%? What barriers are in place that could stop us doing that? Is it, for example, sickness levels or a lack of people power?

Ms Fiona McGrady (Department for Infrastructure): Thanks for the question. We have been working hard with the statutory consultees through the planning statutory consultee forum, which is a cross-government body with representatives from councils and key statutory consultees. We produced quarterly and annual reports. We are one of the few jurisdictions that are open and transparent about statutory consultee performance. We also have legislation that requires our statutory consultees to provide a report to the Department every year. They do so at the start of July. In those reports, they tell us why their performance is what it is.

It is interesting to note that all the statutory consultees mention the same things: resourcing and quality of applications. One of our key statutory consultees tells us that 20% of its late statutory consultations are because of a poor application and the ping-ponging of requests through the system. Through the planning statutory consultee forum, we have developed good operational guidance on statutory consultation. Some consultations have reduced their zoning for consultation processes. Some of our consultees have looked closely at their advice and guidance.

We have to bear it in mind that our statutory consultees receive 40,000 consultations a year across the system. Of those, 22,000 to 24,000 consultations are statutory, and they are required to respond to those within 21 days. Some of our statutory consultees, as Judith mentioned, need more resources. In the round, we are working hard with them. We have quarterly meetings with statutory consultees and councils. It is good to talk, and that is where we thrash out key issues. Yes, there is room for improvement, and, as Rosemary said, we are addressing the quality of applications through the validation checklist. Hopefully, we will see an improvement and a reduction in consultation levels.

When it comes to the number of consultations for major applications, we average 10 consultations per application. That is just an average. I have seen major applications that required 17 or 18 consultations. For local applications, there is an average ratio of two consultations to every application. An enormous amount of work goes into the consultation process. We hope that the validation process will improve the applications, reduce the number of consultations and, as a consequence, improve performance.

We hope that there will be additional resources and that that will also improve consultation responses.

Mr Stewart: Thank you. I will make a final point. The Planning Appeals Commission has been described by some as, "Everyone's friend and no one's family". Review after review has said that it needs to be reformed in how it is held to account, how it is funded and where it sits. I am interested in the Department's view on that. No one is asking for interference, but accountability would be nice. Do you want to see it being brought into the Department from the Department of Justice, where it currently sits? How should it operate? We do not want things to go there, but they often do, and, when they do, they tend to get stuck in the mud. I am interested in the Department's thoughts.

Ms Andrews: It is hard to make a call on that. It provides a valuable function —

Mr Stewart: Undoubtedly.

Ms Andrews: — in the process, and it is independent. Our focus in the planning improvement programme is on trying to make the process quicker, but quality is also really important, so there is a challenge. The planning and LDP processes are ripe for appeals. From a departmental perspective, we would like to see improvement in efficiency and quality, but there are a number of players in that scenario. I have almost given you a politician's answer there. [Laughter.]

Mr Stewart: We are used to it. I understand.

Mrs Daly: The Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) is undertaking a review. It will be really interesting to see whether that has positive findings on the direction of the PAC and whether it sits in the right place.

Mr Stewart: We will look forward to that report. Thank you.

Mr Boylan: This is my favourite subject, as one who sat through the Planning Act 2011.

Mrs Daly: It is all your fault. [Laughter.]

Mr Boylan: I will leave the room now, Chair.

I will confine my comments to three issues. Resources are a major issue for us; there is no point in saying that they are not. We have a two-tier system, but, if we do not get it right at local level, there is impact across the board. We need to look seriously at that. I know that good conversations have been going on. I welcome the validation checks, because the more people who are in the room at the start of the process, the quicker we will get through it, but, if you do not have the resources, you cannot deal with all that. It is all very well saying that statutory consultees have three weeks to respond, but they do not have the resources to do so. If we are serious about fixing it from the start, let us do that. That is my first point. I want you to comment on resources and what we are doing with them at local level.

My second point is about local development plans. A body of work was done, but I am not surprised that those have not been developed after five years. Let us be realistic. I know that there is a body of work out there, but councils have their ambitions and targets for what they want to develop as well as for land use in general, which is what planning is all about. We have known for a while that we are taking away good planners with experience of their area. They start with a single house in the countryside and move on to zoning land around small settlements and towns. Having gained experience of all that, some of them move on to the local development plan team, and that is a resource issue for local development. Everybody has to be involved at that point. I want you to comment on who is involved in that. Are they just in planning? Are they looking just at facts and figures and old maps? Are they looking at predictions of housing units? We have to look at climate change targets. We have to know who is out there, and agents need to be well trained; that is part of the process too.

My final point is about the development regulations. I understand that pre-application consultation is a big thing for us and that a review is ongoing. How will that review ease the process from top to bottom and ensure that we start to get it right? It will be a process for us all.

Those are my three points from 20 years of talking about planning.

Ms Andrews: I will kick off on resources, and Rosemary and Fiona can come in on the other points.

Resourcing is really important for us. This is about resourcing, but there is more to it. Planning has had a bad image. It is a tough job for planners in that they are in a contested space. On motivation and morale, we have a big piece of work to do to give planners the resilience that they need to do the job. The profile of staff in the Department and across councils is an ageing one. Resourcing is one of the things that we plan to move on. We want to get new people into the system. Part of that is improving the image of planning to attract them. Another part is financial sustainability: there are different rates of pay across the system, and we need to look at that. The intention is that we will look at an apprenticeship-type scheme to bring people in at the bottom and grow them through the process. Again, we hope to do that collaboratively so that it is not just in the Department but councils are resourced to do it as well. That is important for us, and we are liaising with colleges and universities on it. It is also about PR and positive imaging around planning. I have one planner at the table. It is a really good career choice, and it is about making it attractive to young people to go down that path. Planners make decisions about the whole investment for the North. We are doing what we can on that. On resilience, it is about giving our staff the tools to deal with what can be stressful situations. That will be a priority for us.

Mrs Daly: I will take you through the regulations. There are three elements. The main part that you are focusing on is the thresholds of development. You could be in a situation where an application that is determined as local has less time to process, given the statutory timelines; has less information; and has less need to have a pre-application consultation. In changing the development regulations, the thresholds would change so that it could fall into being a major application, which means that you would have to undertake a pre-application consultation and have your application in a better place. That would give the council more time to process that application.

Another element is where the applications sit in the system and whether they constitute what is "regionally significant"; for example, whether an application for a renewable project should be determined by a council or central government. It is about looking at the categories of development. That can impact on the fees coming into the system as well. It is about trying to redress and appropriately categorise developments so that they fall within the right development management framework in order to be processed. It has not been looked at for 10 years; it is timely to look at it now so that we get it right. Possibly, when the legislation was made, it was right for that time, but, with advances in development types and more need for social housing and renewables, those thresholds need to be updated. That is really where we are. It is important work that should assist the process of correctly categorising development types. Does that make sense?

Mr Boylan: It does. I know the subject inside out. My point is that the people going into the room as part of the process need to know what they are doing and what information they have to provide. We need to listen. After all this time, that should be —

Mrs Daly: That is exactly it. By having those thresholds, the person will be able to say, "OK. My housing development is over this many units. Therefore, it is local, and this is what I need to do", or, "My housing development is over this many units, so this is the information I need to provide. I need to engage with the community. I need to have a pre-application discussion with the council. I need to have a public meeting with the community". All that sort of stuff is dictated by the development management regulations. The purpose of it is to ensure that the thresholds are appropriate for the type of development, which will help the system and those working in the system.

Mr Boylan: On local development, it is all right saying that we will give somebody permission, but, if NI Electricity (NIE) is not going to provide a connection — it is an apt time to talk about NIE, but I will not get into that — and there are no water connections etc —. I know that that is not the responsibility of planners, but, if we are serious about it, all those conversations need to happen, including with people who are entitled to object. We should bring all that to the fore now. The local development plans are ambitious. I understand why they have not happened after five years. It will be a big body of work for the next number of years. Thanks.

Mr K Buchanan: Thanks, ladies, for coming along. I have a few questions. You referred to the statutory consultee forums that you hold quarterly. Give me a sense of the agenda of those meetings and how they are run. What conversations do you have?

Ms McGrady: There are standard agenda items. One of the key agenda items is performance. As I said, there are key statutory consultees. DFI Roads, NI Water, the Housing Executive and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) all sit on that forum, as does the historic environment division (HED). Three councils sit on it. Performance is a key area that we discuss. Resourcing is a key area. There are conversations about particular council areas and why some councils are maybe not getting the same statutory consultee responses as other councils. It is a high-level meeting, and the directors of statutory consultees attend. The focus is very much on what we can do and how we can improve performance. We also discuss issues of good practice. Statutory consultees will raise the issue of levels of consultation and the quality of consultations. There are open and honest conversations at those meetings. Actions come out of them and are addressed for the next meeting. As I said earlier, it is good to talk. It is good to see people at those meetings, look them in the eye and see who you are dealing with at directorate level. As I say, we have issued guidance on good practice. It is a common-sense approach. It is about being able to lift the phone and talk to somebody. Those are the types of issues that are addressed at the meetings.

Mr K Buchanan: How long, roughly, have those meetings been going on? How many have you had in total, if you were to guesstimate?

Ms McGrady: I would say that we have had 20 plus.

Mr K Buchanan: I looked at your DFI report. You referred earlier to 80% of statutory responses having been responded to on time. That 80% figure is based on five consultees only: HED, DFI Rivers, NI Water, NIEA and DFI Roads. That bar chart is skewed, because DFI Roads has 2,250, NIEA has — I am guessing — roughly 1,000, and NI Water has slightly less. DFI Roads, which has a good response rate, is masking the other ones to give that overall figure of 80%. When you are at that meeting, do you drill down and look at —? I am guessing, based on that bar chart, that 25% of NIEA's responses are late. I am guessing that DFI Rivers and HED's rates are similar. NI Water has a 100% success rate. How much do you drill into those five individual areas? The 80% figure is masking all of them. Some are OK, and some are poor. At the 20 meetings that you have had —? I am picking HED and NIEA, because their figures are abysmal. Does the Shared Environmental Service (SES) attend those meetings? Are the consultees improving individually? It is not about the 80% figure, because that is masking everything.

Ms McGrady: Yes. We report on individual areas, and the average is based on the individual —

Mr K Buchanan: But the 80% is the average of the five.

Ms McGrady: No, the 80% is the average of the full —

Mr K Buchanan: Aye, the five main consultees.

Ms McGrady: No, there are 11 consultees.

Mr K Buchanan: The chart tells me that, in 2024, 80% of statutory consultees responded on time, but that is 80% across the five.

Ms McGrady: I would need to clarify that.

Mr K Buchanan: Unless I am wrong, that is what that chart is telling me. All I am asking is this: is any homework done on the individual areas that are performing badly?

Ms McGrady: Yes. We focus on particular areas. You mentioned NIEA. We have had conversations with NIEA. We deal with its problems. It had resource issues. We drill —

Mr K Buchanan: Sorry for cutting across you. If you look back from before those 20 meetings to now, what has NIEA improved by? Is that over five years? If you are meeting every quarter, it is roughly five years. How have NIEA's response times improved over the past five years?

Ms McGrady: The difficulty with statutory consultations and with statutory consultees is that, at any given moment, you could have a good performance. Then, that statutory consultee loses two or three staff and the performance dips, so you are going round in circles. DFI Rivers is down resources. Its performance was well up there a number of years ago.

Mrs Daly: The level of information that goes to NIEA is different from the level of information that goes to DFI Roads. With DFI Roads, it is black and white and technical: if you meet the standards —

Mr K Buchanan: I appreciate that. It is more simple.

Mrs Daly: NIEA gets consulted with a lot of supporting environmental information that has to be highly scrutinised. It is a different process, so you cannot compare it like for like.

Mr K Buchanan: No, but that graph still makes it look like it is 80% good, but it is not.

Mrs Daly: We do drill down into each of them.

Mr K Buchanan: I am just looking at the overall picture. It looks to be a great that 80% of consultees were responded to on time.

Mrs Daly: The forum gives an opportunity to look at those areas and at where they can be improved. The question of whether we need to consult in the first place is considered. That is the first step. Does that need to happen? When we consult, what is the level of information needed? When an application comes into the system, it automatically generates a consultation to a statutory consultee such as NIEA. It will come back and say that it needs this and that it needs that. An environmental impact statement may have to be considered. I know that everybody likes figures, but you cannot compare the technical information that is presented to DFI Roads —

Mr K Buchanan: I totally agree with you, but that 80% figure is not my figure; it is yours. You are making out that responding to 80% of consultees on time is brilliant, but that is not the fact. You are averaging them all together. I did not do that; you did. You know my point.

Mrs Daly: We are not making out that 80% is brilliant. We are making out that there has been a marked improvement in the response process.

Mr K Buchanan: Fair enough. I do not disagree with that. It is good to see that bar chart broken down, because my point is that the DFI Roads figure masks the others to give the 80% figure.

Mrs Daly: We do look at that. As Fiona indicated, someone from NIEA is present at the meetings. It is really about looking at how to improve that consultation. As Fiona also indicated, we hope that the validation checklist will be one of the areas in which that information has to be put up front. That should mean that quality information has to be there; it has to be right.

Mr K Buchanan: I have two final points. Does Shared Environmental Service attend those meetings?

Ms McGrady: No, it does not attend.

Mr K Buchanan: If I were building an agricultural building and consulting with NIEA, there will be ping-pong between NIEA and SES.

Mrs Daly: Heads of planning are represented at the meeting. There is council input at the forum as well.

Mr K Buchanan: You know my point. I am looking at it from an environmental aspect. Sometimes NIEA and SES play ping-pong, and that has a negative effect on the person who is trying to build the agricultural building or whatever it is.

Finally, what is the definition of a response? You refer to the number of responses that were received on time. What is the definition of a response? Is it a holding letter?

Ms McGrady: No.

Mr K Buchanan: Is it a completed response?

Ms McGrady: Yes. The legislation outlines the definition of a response. I cannot quote you it offhand, but it is not a holding letter. It has to be a definitive response, whether —

Mr K Buchanan: It may say, "We need more information".

Ms McGrady: It may say, "We need more information, "We have given you a response", or, "We refer you to advice". Our legislation covers that.

Mr K Buchanan: Thank you.

Mr McMurray: Thank you for coming. I am going to touch on things that have been raised already, because they are super important. On keeping staff in the system, the feedback that we get sometimes is that, at a local level, a lot of it is a resource and staff issue. You consider the issues of recruitment, retention, capacity, capability and financial sustainability. How do you do that? Those seem to be the key things here, especially capacity and the internal thing.

Ms Andrews: They are. As I said, part of it is about trying to attract people into the industry. We need more visibility of planning and, maybe, some role models. We have links with universities, colleges and schools to talk about planning as a profession and try to entice people into the profession. We also work with the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), which is the professional group for planning. It is not only graduates who we are looking to bring in; it is also about bringing people in to train and get on-the-job experience that will make them eligible to get qualifications. There is work to be done on all that.

To be honest, the financial climate that the Department and councils are working in has made it difficult to recruit people. There is movement in the Department on that, and we hope to get a number of competitions up and running. We are trying to be smart about how we get people in. There are admin staff in the Department who have worked in planning but have general grades: are there conversion courses that they could do? A lot of analysis of the planning process is being done, particularly on the case-management side, to see what planning activities can be done by general staff in order to free up the planners to make the planning decisions. We are doing what we can. Again, it is collaborative. Councils have the same issues as the Department, so it is about how, together, we bolster resources across the planning system.

Mr McMurray: It is about capability, but, if we increase capability and capacity in the system, it needs to be retained.

Ms Andrews: On the capability side, we plan to do a lot more training. Planning is constantly changing, and environmental changes come in. Planners need to be up to date on all that. There is also the renewables piece. As well their having formal qualifications and training, it is important for planners to be kept abreast of all the developments. Again, that applies to both the Department and local councils.

Mrs Daly: The recent engagement has identified the training needs and capability issues. Statutory consultees are one area in which papers and guidance have been produced. It is about delivering that into the mindset of the people who make the decisions. They need to know when to consult and how to deal with a consultation. We must remember that planning officers still have to make the decision; it is made in light of the consultation. The planning officers need the tools to be able to have the confidence to make value judgements, and not always have to sit back and wait for the consultation. The planners need to be able to evaluate the risk — and to be careful about it, because, as we all know, you can do all the work, get it over all the line, and the next thing is that there is a challenge against it. We need to provide confidence in the system. We see our role, in a leadership capacity, as coordinating that with councils. Some of the issues are relevant to the Department as well. There are common themes, as Judith said.

Mr McMurray: When I looked at the key achievements, I hoped to see that planning application times had come down, but there is no mention of that. Can I infer from the fact that that is not dealt with in the report that that it is not an achievement?

Mrs Daly: We have to hold our hands up and say that the timeliness of applications has not come down. However, you have to remember that our system is very supportive of applicants. If someone puts in a mediocre application, it will be put through the system. There will be a lot of hard effort and graft from the planning authority to get it through the system to approval. As I said, 95% of applications are broadly approved in the system. There are very few refusals in this jurisdiction. You can either have quick snappy decisions, which you do not want, or you can work closely and carefully with the agents, and that is what is happening. We hope that the validation checklists will mean that that happens outside the process as opposed to in the process, with engagement having already started. Going back to the development management thresholds, if the applications are in the right category, that will happen early in the process. There is no one fix. The validation checklist is one element, but there will need to be a combination of things. Capacity building is another factor. It is not linear; it is collective. We are alert to the issues. We will make good value judgements as to what the priorities are to make the best improvements.

Ms McGrady: The Department has done a deep dive into the system and broken it down to identify potential blockages. We are meeting each council individually to look at its performance and at where the potential blockages are. We have extracted the information and key markers from the portal. We are trying to understand why certain elements of the system are taking longer than other elements. Some of the information that we have extracted is very interesting. Councils that we have met are keen to see where they are taking more time than they thought they were. We hope that councils will look at the data that we provide them, do a further deep dive into their applications and make improvements in the areas in which we have identified problems. That work is ongoing.

Sometimes, there are simple fixes. It is about shining a light on those areas. Maybe councils can improve performance. Alternatively, if they come back to the Department and say that there are problems there, we may have to look strategically at areas in which we can improve. We are working hard with councils on avenues to try to improve performance. However, as Rosemary said, it is complex. Every council is different, with different applications, different numbers of applications and different resource levels. There are many types of scenario. Some are urban, and some are rural. Every council is unique, but we are working with them individually to try to address their individual problems and take away strategic issues that we, in the Department, can work on and improve.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK, Andrew?

Mr McMurray: One more?

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Very quickly.

Mr McMurray: Yes. I am going to ask three questions in one now.

You mentioned a deep dive. That is interesting. Will the findings be in separate reports or suchlike that go to the planning committees? You said that each council is different. Does that mean that each council can expect bespoke intervention or bespoke assistance from you? It is frustrating. You can see different problems. It is good to hear about all the capacity, but councils nearly need bespoke intervention, dare I say it.

Mrs Daly: That is exactly the nature of the conversations that we are having with councils. It is about looking through the different aspects of the system. It is not that councils are bespoke; it is that they need bespoke responses, if you understand. Some councils are performing really well at the front part of the system. For some councils, the issue is with the committees part of the system. For others, the problem could be with consultees. Oddly, the statistics show that consultation is pretty steady among all the planning authorities. I will let Fiona explain the nature of it.

Ms McGrady: We extracted data on decided applications in 2023-24 and broke that data down into the markers of the system that we can rely on at the back end of the portal. We broke down the front end, the middle and the back end. We identified the time taken, for example, from when an application is received until it is validated, from when an application is validated until a first consultation is issued, and from when a first consultation is issued until the last consultation is issued. We also looked at the time for which it sits with councils and the Department post the last consultation having been issued.

We have — we are working through this with councils — provided individual information and asked our council colleagues to work collaboratively to understand where the delays are occurring in their particular areas. That includes the Department. We hope that, if there is a delay at the front end of the system, we will see an improvement there when that work is done and when the validation checklists come in. If there is room to improve at the back end of the system, we will look at what is happening between the last consultation and the decision's being issued. Are there complications at that level? Are there planning committee issues? We have looked at the whole system. The Department has done a lot of work in looking at legislation. We have done a lot of work with statutory consultees. We have done a lot of work on the entire system, but the performance is still sitting at —. Therefore, we need to understand what else is happening. We are carrying out a collaborative diagnosis to understand what is happening in the system so that we can do what is within our power to rectify it.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I love the term "collaborative diagnosis": that is a new one. It is not one that you hear on 'Casualty' [Laughter.]

Mr Boylan: Just a few injections will help that.

Mrs Daly: I hope so.

Ms McGrady: I cannot take credit for that one [Laughter.]

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I am sure that we will hear an awful lot more about it.

Mr McReynolds: I will rattle through my questions, if you want to take a quick note of them, in the interests of speed and time. Fiona, you mentioned a couple of times the poor quality of applications. I know that the Minister mentioned that as well. I raised the issue with him in the Chamber. What is your assessment of what the checklists seek to achieve? Is the focus on local applications or major, regionally significant applications? Since becoming an MLA, I have met multiple applicants who have spent not £100 or £200 but millions of pounds to get an application through. What is your assessment of the checklists and what they are trying to iron out of the system?

You also mentioned the high volume of consultee responses. I cannot remember the number; I think that it was 40,000. How many of those consultations are re-consultations? During my time as a councillor, I encountered cases where someone had put in an application to build a house but then wanted to change something, so they needed to go back and re-consult on the application that was already approved. Of the figures that you mentioned, that is another figure that is incredibly high. How many of those are re-consultations? Has that been looked at before? If not, is it something that can be looked at and changed?

Chair, you mentioned the overcomplication of the system. On the timelines, I think that it was Rosemary who mentioned that it could take years or weeks. Is an application assessed from the date of its submission or from the date of the final amendment? I have heard from some that it is assessed from the date that the final drawings are submitted. They said, "We submitted the application in 2014, but it was taken from" — I cannot remember what year it is, for goodness sake; it is 2025 — "2023 when the last drawing was submitted". Is that a fair assessment? Has the Department looked at that?

Lastly, I want to ask, if I can read my writing, about Northern Ireland as a jurisdiction. Fiona — sorry, I am isolating you — in your last comments, you spoke about the fact that there are lots of competing interests and things that you have to look at. How does Northern Ireland stack up against other parts of the UK and Europe? There are competing interests everywhere, but our planning system has a lot of issues, and a lot of people are recommending changes. Those issues that you listed — rural and urban — exist everywhere, so how do we stack up in comparison with everybody else? That is me done. Thank you.

Mrs Daly: I will go first. You asked about the poor quality of the applications and what the checklists seek to achieve. That will go hand in hand with the consultations. The validation checklist will set out that you need to provide, say, a transport assessment or a car parking assessment, if that is required. It will set out whether you need to put in a heritage impact assessment. At this time, an application will go into the system and will involve a consultation. A consultee can come back and say, "We need a transport assessment". It will cut down on that time frame. That is how it should work. That is where we hope to see the improvements.

Mr McReynolds: Will it be for local applications in that sense?

Mrs Daly: No, it will be across the board: local and major applications. The Committee has really hit on something. There is a lot of work to do with the locals. The major applications are generally of a higher quality, and they tend to go through the system more easily because of the pre-application engagement. It is really about getting to the locals. We need to focus on the bread and butter of the planning system. We are very alive to that.

How many consultees are re-consulted? I am not so sure that we monitor that, Fiona. It is something that we can look into with our statutory consultee forum. We can raise that issue and come back to you. At the moment, we do not have that figure.

Ms McGrady: We do not have it just yet, but quite a few applications are re-consulted on. We need to check whether we can pull those figures. This is all about the level of consultation and the quality of the applications. I mentioned the ratio of consultations per type of application. We are trying to reduce that through the planning statutory consultee forum. The more consultations and re-consultations there are, the longer applications are in the system. We are working in the statutory consultee forum to try to reduce the number. Hopefully, as I said, through the validation checklist, if quality applications come in, there will not be the need for as many consultations.

Ms Andrews: We can definitely look at that.

Ms McGrady: We can look at that.

Mrs Daly: The valid date is the date of the application, and that is when the clock starts ticking. That is the date that should be measured, and we can extract the information from the portal. It is not what the council is saying is the date; it is the date that is on the portal. It is from the date that the application is valid. Again, the validation checklist means that that application is not valid until all the right information is there. You can see how that is a key part of the process, albeit it is not the big fix.

We are very alive to what goes on in other jurisdictions. We have an engagement process with the UK and Ireland in terms of planning regimes. Speaking as a professional, I say that, oddly, a lot of the issues are similar. There are lots of things that you hear on the news about delays in the planning system. There is talk about fast-tracking and improving the environmental impact assessment. There are lots of things. There are many ways to look at that. We do have engagement, and we work together, and we very much look outward for good practice that we can use. We have had consultations recently with Scotland on planning performance. We recently had meetings with the Office of the Planning Regulator (OPR) about the planning development system in the South. We are a region in ourselves, and we will do it our way, but we certainly can learn from good experiences elsewhere to help streamline and improve the process. We are mindful of that, and we keep up to date with other jurisdictions and what their agendas are around climate change, economic development and providing for society. We are alive to that.

Mr McReynolds: Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. Mark should be joining us online.

Mr K Buchanan: He must be making bacon or something. [Laughter.]

Mr Boylan: Mark, you are back now.

Mr Durkan: I had not gone away, you know. [Laughter.]

Thank you for the presentation. It is not that long since you were in before, but I am glad to hear that work is ongoing, as you assured us it would be, to try to eke out improvements in the system. I appreciate that it is almost like turning a tanker that has been drifting for a long time, albeit through no fault of anyone other than, perhaps, having a lack of resource and focus on it.

I have a couple of questions, the first of which is about local area plans. We are still waiting for them. Do the Department or the councils have any remit or powers to introduce, if you like, interim policies to prevent the lacunae — I am not sure whether "exploited" is the right word — allowing development of a scale or nature that might be contrary to a council's longer-term aspirations in an area for their area? It is not my only hobby horse, but I am thinking particularly about the university area in Derry, where there is now an avalanche of applications for houses in multiple occupation (HMOs). While there is no area plan, there is no real policy on that. It is a no man's land, or a no plans land, that could, potentially, be exploited and do detriment to the city and the district in the longer term.

I have some other questions, so I will run through them too.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Please, yes. [Laughter.]

Mr Durkan: My next question is about measuring the performance of councils. Councils have advised the Department that they intend to deal with certain planning improvement recommendations in a "business as usual" format. That is about looking at things such as record keeping, minutes and implementation of policy, particularly around rural housing. Earlier, John used a homework analogy, but are councils now being asked or expected to mark their own homework?

I want to follow up on Peter's point about the checklist. We have heard again today about the quality of applications. I have aired my concerns before that the checklist is not being applied to regionally significant applications that the Department deals with, but those are the ones that are taking an extremely long time. On the other hand, those are the ones that, you would think, have more money thrown at them and have a greater degree of expertise in drawing up the application. Is the Department going to look at those types of applications as well, and how can that be done?

Mrs Daly: On your question about the local area plans, legislation states that the LDP has primacy and that other material considerations will be taken into consideration. For councils that do not have a development plan, that legislation gives weight to the extant development plan in that area. They do have planning policy at a local level, so you still have your area plan that would have been published by the DOE at the time.

The legislation allows for other material considerations. The strategic planning policy statement (SPPS) is the regional policy, and it deals with providing housing for all, for mixed communities and for different needs. If there is a need, the regional policy set out in the SPPS would still allow, for example — you just referred to it — HMOs to be considered as a material consideration in the assessment of that application.

You referred specifically to your area in Derry. They have their planning strategy coming through, so I am hopeful that there is a direction in that as to what ways HMOs are to go in the university area. If not, that is exactly something that will come through in the local plans policy document. At this time, however, those considerations can still take place within the existing policy framework. It is not the case that, because there is no area plan, you cannot weigh up and value the impact that a certain level of HMOs will have on a streetscape or the character of an area or what they will mean for an area. Those can be considered by the planning officers. Going back to the point about information, if you were going in to make an application or to object, you would need to have done that analysis to put it before the council to consider.

Mr Durkan: It can be taken on board by planning officers, but, invariably, it is when they go to the Planning Appeals Commission that the difficulty arises.

Mrs Daly: There is still a material consideration. The Planning Appeals Commission is duty-bound to make decisions in the same way as councils. Again, it is about what evidence is presented. If you are coming to an appeal with no analysis of a development and whether it is good or negative for the area, the commission does not have that in front of it. However, if you come along with robust evidence to persuade the commission that it is negative or positive, it has to give that consideration. If it does not, that is an issue. It is not that the commission can disregard it just because it is not in —. [Inaudible.]

Mrs Daly: It remains there. There is the transition period that allows councils still to make decisions within a policy framework that exists, which is the SPPS area plans, until the LDP is adopted.

Mr Durkan: That will all need to be written through the refusal, I suppose.

Mrs Daly: Yes.

Mr Durkan: It would be helpful if officers did that rather than just leave it to objectors. That was useful. Thank you.

Mrs Daly: You mentioned regionally significant applications and no checklist. My understanding is that regionally significant applications are high-end applications, so they are probably the most expensive applications to put through the system. There is no way that those applications would come to the Department without the proper technical information that they need. For example, we can look at an environment statement or noise assessment. I cannot really answer why —.

Mr Durkan: But that is —.

Mrs Daly: Sorry, go ahead.

Mr Durkan: It is just a wee bit contradictory, if we are saying that the checklist will speed up the process of applications. It is hard to imagine that the regionally significant ones would not have that, yet they are taking up to a decade at times, and there is a lot of —.

Mrs Daly: We were looking at processes with the regionally significant applications as well as working with councils. We want to streamline that as well to make that more effective, too, so that we are not leaving ourselves out in that deep dive of an analysis of the system.

My understanding is that for the Department to have that would maybe have required primary legislation, whereas the regulations were for applications made to councils. In my experience, the applications that are sitting with the Department should be supported by the information that would be required in a validation checklist. You are not going to be considering a regionally significant application without a transport assessment or an environmental impact assessment for a significant development. It is already in the system with that information. What we are trying to fix with the validation checklist is the poor quality of local applications more so than the regionally significant applications. For want of a better word — it has been used in many documents — it is the applications that are the "MOT" system of planning, where you put in a really poor-quality, low-grade application and the council will end up having to do the majority of the work.

Mr Durkan: Yes, but we have had the same charge levelled against regionally significant, particularly renewable energy, applications.

Mrs Daly: Yes. I assure you that I have been on both sides in submitting those applications and assessing them, and they do come with a substantial amount of background information. You are absolutely right that there is no validation checklist for them, but, if we feel that it is a necessary step, we will look to take that step.

Mr Durkan: That is very welcome; a very welcome step. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. Thank you very much for coming to the Committee today. Following on from Peter's question about the number of re-consultations, it is important to know that figure. The Committee has heard from the likes of Renewable NI, which has said that it feels as though there is over-consultation on applications. Looking at it from my perspective, you would think that not having ongoing, constant consultation with statutory consultees would help with resource. I understand that a balance needs to be met in case a challenge in relation to applications is put in. However, surely, there needs to be an element of looking at re-consultation? From the Committee's point of view, it would be interesting to see some of the figures on that.

The other thing that I wanted to check up on is the call-in process. That is being reviewed at the moment with Belfast City Council. Very briefly, can you let me know when that review will potentially come to an end, when we will see the findings of that and what you are learning from that already?

Mrs Daly: Is this the call-in for the development in conservation areas?

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Yes.

Mrs Daly: That pilot is coming up on a year, so we are at the steps now when we will look at the lessons learned. It has been beneficial in that things seem to have gone through the process quite quickly, without the need to bring every one of them to the Department. However, we are at a point in time when we need to review that, and we certainly look forward to updating you on any of the pilot's findings.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. Thank you. We appreciate it. It will be interesting to see the findings. Once you see them, if you could give them to the Committee, we would really appreciate that as well. Thank you very much. We appreciate your time today.