Development Services Performance Standards

Development Services – How we measure how well we are serving our customers.

Within Development Services we measure what we are doing in a number of ways to let us and our customers know the progress we are making against our service delivery standards and performance targets. These standards and targets have either been set nationally (i.e. they apply to all councils) or at a local level (i.e. they are South Gloucestershire Council’s own targets). The most important of these standards and targets are set out in the Council Plan and the Development Service Customer Charters, and are kept regularly under review to ensure they remain relevant and challenging. Many of our standards and targets measure how well our processes are working (they are ‘output’ measures) but we also have some ‘outcome’ measures which seek to measure the actual impact, or the difference we have made to our customers through the delivery of our services, and we are working to develop more.

Performance data is collected and analysed throughout the year, with the data and a commentary being reported formally on a quarterly and end-of-year basis.

The information we gather about our performance is essential in helping us plan for improvements to our services for customers.

Below we have set out some of the key output performance targets which apply to our services and how we are doing against these. Elsewhere on the website we have also published our customer satisfaction data which is an important way for us to measure the impact or outcome of our work.

Development Control

The “Speed of Processing a Planning Application” is measured nationally and is known as NI 157. It is broken down into the three categories to measure ‘major’, ‘minor’ and ‘other’ type of planning applications. South Gloucestershire Council has also set itself more challenging targets to further improve our service to our customers. The higher the percentage of applications processed within the target time, the better.

PROCESSING PLANNING APPLICATIONS

We also measure how well we perform when defending our decision to refuse planning applications at appeal. In this case, the lower the percentage of appeals ‘allowed’, the better

PERCENTAGE OF APPEALS 'ALLOWED’

Building Control

A key local indicator of our performance when processing a ‘full plans’ Building Regulations application is the time we have taken to respond to the applicant with our initial appraisal of their plans submission. This is measured for all ‘full plan’ applications and helps to ensure we keep on track with our target for the overall determination of Building Regulations applications within the statutory timescales, which currently stands at 100%.

INITIAL PROCESSING OF ‘FULL PLANS’ APPLICATIONS

Planning Enforcement

Within Planning enforcement we are committed to providing an equitable and timely service to both the complainant and those who may be the subject of enforcement investigations. One local measure we use looks at how quickly we investigate and provide an initial substantive response when enforcement complaints are made.

INITIAL PROCESSING OF ENFORCEMENT COMPLAINTS