Scottish Government

8 AN ADVISORY SERVICE

8.1 A further issue considered as part of this research was the potential benefits of advisory services to help speed up delivery of large proposals. In particular, the role and remit of the English Advisory Team for Large Applications ( ATLAS) service was reviewed, with a view to assessing its relevance and applicability to Scotland.

8.2 This section provides an overview of the ATLAS model, including:

• the operating model
• the cost of the services
• how services are accessed, utilised and paid for by local authorities
• the scale of uptake
• the nature of both current and anticipated demand

8.3 A full scale evaluation of ATLAS was beyond the scope of this research. Our objective was to establish the basic parameters of what is offered and consider how similar services might benefit the Scottish planning system.

8.4 ATLAS are also key advisors on the PPA approach, and so we sought their views on that too. Two of our English local authority interviews were with authorities who have used ATLAS.

The ATLAS model

8.5 ATLAS was originally set up in 2004 as a pilot scheme (by the then Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) to provide an independent advisory service to local authorities in London. It was set up to provide advice relating to large scale housing and mixed use projects (those with 500+ residential units). In 2006, the service was expanded to cover the wider South East, East and South West Government Office regions, and in 2008 was extended to include the East and West Midlands.

8.6 Initially, it was a small unit - it started with 3.5 full-time equivalent ( FTE) staff, working in just one region. ATLAS now has a team of 20 FTE staff working across five regions from three offices. Roughly two thirds came from a local authority background, and a third from consultancy. Four of these are specialists:

• Urban designer
• Highways engineer
• Sustainable communities advisor
• Research manager

8.7 The regional teams consist of a manager and senior planning manager, generally with a planning background. The team was expanded by two advisers to allow the free inception day service (see below) for PPAs to be offered.

8.8 The need for ATLAS was identified by the Planning Advisory Service ( PAS), and advisory services were formerly part of this service. The team is hosted by English Partnerships ( EP), which will join with the Housing Corporation to become the new Homes & Communities Agency. ATLAS is funded by CLG on a three yearly funding cycle, through the planning delivery grant. There is a memorandum of understanding between CLG and EP.

8.9 The cost of ATLAS is wholly met by Central Government. Local authorities do not pay for the advice. The director of ATLAS advised that the budgets were as follows:

• 2006-7 budget - £0.5m
• 2007-8 budget - £2.5m
• 2008-9 budget - confidential - but higher
• 2009-10 budget - confidential - but higher

8.10 The Government has resolved to expand the team and its geographic remit further - this was partly in response to a recommendation in the Barker Report. ³⁴ The scope of projects covered by the ATLAS team will also expand to include large scale mixed use proposals that contain in excess of 200 residential units.

8.11 As part of the establishment of the new Homes & Communities Agency, the geographic scope and functions of ATLAS will be subject to review through 2008, but the overall mission and objectives of the team are not expected to change.

Aims and Objectives

8.12 ATLAS is provided in response to one of four key objectives identified by PAS, namely

"offering direct support to individual local authorities to deliver key Government objectives such as large scale housing developments or regeneration projects". ³⁵

8.13 The service is aimed at:

• Local Government officers and members involved in the project assessment and decision making process
• Landowners, developers and scheme promoters
• Consultants involved in the planning and development process i.e. urban designers, property market, transport, environmental, management
• Other relevant community, public or private sector stakeholders

8.14 ATLAS aims to:

• Improve the quality of the planning process and the outcome
• Act as a partner and as an independent reviewer
• Increase knowledge and expertise of LPAs
• Help LPAs build better relationships with developers and stakeholders
• Improve the planning system based on collaborative working

8.15 ATLAS is primarily an advisor to the local authority. It is not an extra staff resource, but it has responded to individual needs of local authorities in the past and undertakes a range of bespoke tasks (including input into Area Action Plans and policy making). It is not an extra pair of hands.

8.16 ATLAS will engage at any stage of the development process when requested by the local authority. The only specific selection criteria for ATLAS involvement are that sites are generally large or of strategic importance, and there is no direct EP land or financial interest.

8.17 Almost as important as its direct advice role is its role in establishing and disseminating best practice, primarily through its web site. ³⁶

8.18 The ATLAS team has been given considerable freedom to develop its role, as it is not based on any existing model elsewhere, but is understood to be a unique service.

Supply of and demand for advice

8.19 Initially, most of the ATLAS clients were referrals - generally from the local Government Office ( GO). The GO for the South East's major development team is an important source of referrals. The GOs vary in terms of enthusiasm. Some local authorities were resentful about the fact that they had been referred and not particularly enthusiastic.

8.20 ATLAS has found that word of mouth is the best route into a case - where local authorities phone up and ask for advice. The first ten projects were either applications or appeals, but ATLAS is now increasingly involved in policy work and in reserved matters applications. Some approaches go no further when the authority discovers that they are not an 'extra pair of hands'.

8.21 ATLAS screens approaches to establish whether the case is one where they can make an impact, using a formal ROAME (Rationale, Objectives, Appraisal, Monitoring, Evaluation) project assessment. The ATLAS team does not have a contractual relationship with the local authority, but they have a disciplined process of defining the scope of their involvement.

8.22 The average number of live projects at any one time is approximately 35, of which around 20 involve intensive involvement. This is roughly what they can deal with. Projects may last as long as two years in total.

Involvement with design

8.23 Quite a high proportion of ATLAS cases involve support with the design process. However their urban design support is holistic - it is an integral part of the whole process. It is often focused on support at the outset and takes the form of giving people the tools and the language to describe the place they want the development to be.

8.24 ATLAS is involved in giving ideas and in visioning - setting the objectives - but they recognise that they are not the designer. They see themselves as working with the developer's urban designer. Occasionally they become by default the designer, and find themselves drafting sketch schemes.

8.25 ATLAS has a memorandum of understanding with the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment ( CABE) in order to avoid conflicts, and they share intelligence on projects. In practice however there are not all that many joint projects. CABE are much more involved in supporting the procurement of designers - which is not an ATLAS role. CABE have their own Design Review process, which takes place later in the life of the project.

Development economics and mediation

8.26 ATLAS will also support authorities on planning gain negotiations - it will give an opinion on the amount of planning gain a scheme can bear. They aim to give a quick turnaround on affordable housing negotiations. They also offer a brokerage and mediation role - some authorities require a lot of support and ATLAS seek to offer support but to avoid being seen as the decision makers.

8.27 The main perceived benefits of ATLAS are:

• An impartial opinion
• Potential to save money (through less appeals etc)
• Can help speed up the process
• Good for sharing knowledge and skills base

ATLAS's Role in PPAs

8.28 ATLAS has played a major role in the development of PPAs - they piloted the approach with 23 authorities who were willing to test it. As well as developing the approach, ATLAS still plays a key role in PPAs. ATLAS are strong supporters of the approach - they prepared the Guidance ³⁷, and they provide additional information on it on their website. They also now offer a free inception day service to authorities who want one.

8.29 They have in effect been both the developers and the champion of the PPA approach. While they see project management as the key to the approach, they do not favour an overly formal approach to project management. ATLAS do not, for example, favour the use of advanced project management tools such as PRINCE2.

8.30 PPAs are now monitored on the quarterly PS1 and PS2 returns that monitor the performance of English local authorities in relation to the determination of planning applications. However, there is a significant delay in information and, furthermore, PPAs are more about the pre-application stage which would not be captured by these statistics.

Evaluation Evidence

8.31 Each quarter, an independent consultant (Databuild) collects customer feedback on ATLAS cases. We have reviewed two of these quarterly reports - dated May 2007 and April 2008. ³⁸ (There has been no full evaluation of ATLAS as yet but the draft business plan for ATLAS for 2008-2011 indicates that it proposes to commission an independent evaluation of the PPA process in the fourth quarter of 2008-2009 and again in 2010-2011.)

8.32 The quarterly reports are based on face to face and telephone interviews with authorities who have used ATLAS and a small number of developers and agents. In 2007, Databuild commented that local authorities prefer ATLAS (as opposed to consultants or lobbyists) to be carrying out tasks such as appraisals or documentation reviews as they are independent, authoritative, and - not least - free. Relative to the option of working more closely with neighbouring authorities, ATLAS was preferred, as other authorities were felt to have no more expertise and to be similarly lacking in staff resources. The absence of a fixed contract was felt to give more flexibility for short pieces of advice, whereas consultants need to have a brief and a contract.

8.33 ATLAS is rated in these surveys against seven key value added measures:

• Speeding the process
• Improving project management
• Resolving blocks
• Design and quality
• Time and money
• Improving relations
• Local authority confidence in future approach

8.34 In 2007, the most substantial impacts were considered to be in improving relations. However, they were also considered to have had a substantial or significant impact on the other measures in between 70 and 85% of cases reviewed.

8.35 The reports provide some qualitative evidence of impact and some specific examples of time and money savings in that quarter. For example, the Quarter 4 2006/07 report documents ATLAS's involvement in three cases which were believed to have resulted in savings on consultants of c. £130,000. One of these three cases involved an ATLAS officer assisting the Council in producing an urban design statement which it estimated would have cost around £40,000 in consultancy fees. The savings in delays were estimated to be worth £310,000 in terms of the potential costs a delay in the process could have created and which were avoided by ATLAS.

8.36 The qualitative evidence suggests that ATLAS is succeeding in building capacity and in improving relations between developers and authorities. One local authority said:

" ATLAS reassures us and acts as a mentor. They are an objective group who can test our views"'

8.37 A key theme has been ATLAS's role as a sounding board and critical friend. One authority said that they were now:

"more confident about what should go into a masterplan for a scheme of this size."

8.38 ATLAS was said by one landowner to have:

"given the LPA a degree of confidence that we are not simply trampling all over them"' ³⁹

8.39 The April 2008 report summarised four quarters of survey work. This covered the period when ATLAS had expanded very significantly. It showed continued high levels of impact, although slightly lower than in previous reports, with under 70% reporting substantial or significant against all seven measures. Design and quality, improving project management and increasing the confidence of local authorities were the areas where the ratings were generally consistently highest.

8.40 The fourth quarter responses were markedly lower than previous quarters - generally below 50% - but the reasons for this change were not clear. The representativeness of the sample may have reduced as the 4 ^th quarter sample was particularly small (16 interviews as opposed to over 20 in previous quarters).

8.41 The qualitative evidence in this second report suggested that experience was more mixed - respondents pointed to the need for early involvement of ATLAS, for a mediation role that involved more arbitration and for a more extended role for ATLAS. There were some concerns that ATLAS had reduced its role in one development because of resource constraints and that this had affected the progress of the steering group, which appeared to need external impetus. For example, one developer said:

"It was a missed opportunity. They could have had a positive effect (had they been involved sooner). Hopefully the local authority has learnt this." ⁴⁰

8.42 At a broader level, it is not clear how many authorities and developers have experience of ATLAS - our own planning teams in the South of England had had no direct contact with ATLAS until recently. It will be important to understand what the reach of the organisation has been, in the light of the recent criticism of the Academy for Sustainable Communities, ⁴¹ which reached only 3% of relevant organisations. ⁴²

Case study experience of using ATLAS

8.43 A number of our English case study authorities had had some experience in working with ATLAS on major applications.

• ATLAS had assisted Guildford Borough Council with the PPA at the Slyfield site. Their experience of project management, dealing with stakeholders and their neutral position benefited the project. Although the process has not yet been completed and the planning application has yet to be submitted, Guildford Borough Council was happy with ATLAS' input and process to date.
• Lambeth Borough Council was involved in the ATLAS pilot project and ATLAS have since been engaged on the Clapham Park Estate project. Although this project did not have a PPA, the expertise, experience and independence of the ATLAS team was highly effective in resolving some key urban design issues.
• Cambridge City Council has approached ATLAS in the past and will be approaching ATLAS for assistance with future PPAs (specifically Cambridge East and the University site). When approached previously, ATLAS declined to assist with a PPA due to lack of resources. However, this may also have been a consequence of the presence of Cambridgeshire Horizons, and a desire to avoid having more than one body with a similar role. ⁴³ However, ATLAS has recently assisted Cambridge City Council with two main aspects of the National Institute of Agricultural Botany ( NIAB) development site. They helped with general project management and facilitated Primary Care Trust workshops. Their understanding of the roles of different organisations and their experience in working with stakeholders was considered very valuable.

8.44 From the case study authorities who had worked with ATLAS the perceived benefits included:

• The majority of local planning authorities said that ATLAS provided 'excellent' or 'good project management'
• ATLAS also helped to unblock the project and keep motivation going amongst partners
• ATLAS has experience in dealing with local authorities on PPAs and they are therefore an efficient way of exchanging information in specific situations, such as working in a growth area
• The ATLAS services are free, and so provide additional resources, but as a result the support ATLAS can offer is limited
• ATLAS has a range of specialised skills, such as urban design, techniques for calculating affordable housing provision, and project management as well as acting as a facilitator at workshops or public events
• ATLAS has a national profile and is neutral and transparent
• ATLAS challenges partners to be realistic and improve relationships

Scottish consultees' views on an advisory service

8.45 The majority of those consulted in Scotland were fairly positive about the concept of an advisory service, or at least some element of it. Some were more positive about the information/website element - particularly local authorities where experienced staff were often called upon to provide this kind of information, or where there is more limited access to expertise in various fields in house e.g. for small local authorities, or in local offices.

8.46 Others felt the advisory role could be useful in some major developments, although voiced concerns that there might be some reluctance in involving the advisory service, as it could be perceived as admission of failure and an inability to manage the process without external assistance. This could make local authorities less likely to seek their involvement and lessen its value, so it would need to be carefully promoted.

8.47 The solicitors we consulted felt the advisory role was potentially useful - although they were unlikely to need to use it themselves, they were aware of situations when it could have been useful. Some local authorities did not think it would be useful for them - but there may be an element of not wanting to admit that situations had ever deteriorated to the stage where this was necessary.

8.48 Some consultees felt the resources would be better spent within local authority planning departments, ensuring that the in-house skills were sufficient and appropriate for dealing with major applications.

8.49 One comment made by several consultees (local authorities and planning consultants) was that there was a lack of information sharing between local authorities in relation to best practice and experience in dealing with more complex or unusual applications. They identified a benefit in being able to locate an individual planner who had dealt with a specific kind of application or experience of a particular approach.

An advisory service for Scotland?

8.50 In our view, an advisory service supporting best practice in the processing of major planning applications would be helpful in Scotland. The ATLAS approach would however need some modification. ATLAS is heavily focused on improving the delivery of major strategic housing sites in England, both in terms of quality and speed of delivery.

8.51 Scotland has far fewer large sites of that type. While we have no doubts that they could benefit greatly from the ATLAS approach, with its more sophisticated approach to visioning, establishing issues and setting up a structure of working groups to deal with these issues, many of the more intractable problems relating to the 'stuck' Scottish strategic housing sites relate to issues of infrastructure provision, both in terms of cost and in terms of mechanisms to secure payment for infrastructure. It is not clear that these could be wholly resolved by such an approach.

8.52 Although we do not feel that the ATLAS model could be adopted in Scotland without adaptation, there is in our view a role for a body or group which provides and supports best practice in dealing with major planning applications. That body or group could focus particularly on promoting best practice through a web site, in the same way that the ATLAS website does. It could also provide support in encouraging good practice, for example in facilitating pre-application discussions and/or developing processing agreements.

8.53 The website would set out best practice in project management, and would contain the template for processing agreements. It would also draw together in one location the detailed requirements and specifications of the various statutory consultees for surveys of various types, should the early pre-application project phase suggest that such surveys and other information are required. This web-based resource on good practice would therefore act as a central location for a set of links to the guidance issued by the various statutory consultees. The most obvious location for such a web-based resource would be to include an advice similar to that on the ATLAS website within a Scottish Government planning portal, or within the local government Improvement Service website.

8.54 The advisory service could also provide or organise training in project management skills and, potentially, in other areas where training is needed. A further useful function of such a service would be to act as a secretariat for good practice networks or learning sets for planning authorities and others who want to come together to share good practice on dealing with certain types of applications e.g. good practice on wind farms. The experience is that this type of group needs support with facilitation or else it tends to fold in the face of the competing time pressures of the participants.

8.55 We had some initial reservations about a service which advises on specific planning applications - for example on planning gain and design. We were concerned that creating posts of that kind would have a further detrimental effect on local authority staffing in Scotland, which was acknowledged to have suffered significantly from a loss of staff, mainly to the private sector, but also to the Scottish Government. The ATLAS team acknowledged that the roles created within ATLAS were particularly interesting and attractive. However, the recent dramatic shifts in the property market have resulted in staff being released by the property and development sectors, so this conclusion is currently less valid.

8.56 Some consultees felt that it would be a better use of resources to expand the existing ATLAS service to cover Scotland as well as England, rather than re-produce the same service here. Although there is some logic to this suggestion, it was also acknowledged that this might be unworkable both from a politic perspective but also because of the significant differences between the Scottish and English planning systems. Nonetheless, some form of mentoring by ATLAS of a Scottish service might be feasible.

8.57 Another option that was considered was to tap into the expertise already in place in local authorities around Scotland, rather than creating a dedicated advisory service. Although we can see benefits in developing stronger networks and sharing of skills and experience, we do not consider this to be a suitable alternative to a dedicated service. This is because resources are already very stretched and it is difficult to see how staff in planning departments within local authorities would be able to devote the necessary time and resources to providing advice on an 'on demand' basis.

Summary

8.58 The First Minister has set out an aim to simplify public services, to reduce the number of public bodies and to apply much tougher tests to the creation of new bodies. A further objective is to bring together organisations with similar skills, expertise and processes. In this context, any new service will need to have a clearly defined remit and rationale and be tightly focused, avoiding any duplication of existing resources. There is potentially scope for integration within an existing service, such as the Improvement Service, or the SCR rather than creation of a completely new body.

8.59 The ATLAS model has worked well in England and we consider that a similar type of service would be of benefit to the Scottish planning system. In scale, we would not envisage that the service would require more than around 3 full-time equivalent staff and could operate with an annual budget in the region of £500,000. The current economic climate means that there may be individuals previously employed in the private sector with development appraisal experience suited to such employment, meaning that the creation of this service would not necessarily place additional demands on the already stretched supply of local authority staff with appropriate planning skills and knowledge.

8.60 Although we do not consider that a simple extension of the English ATLAS model to cover the Scottish system would be workable, we do see a potential role for ATLAS staff to 'mentor' Scottish staff, particularly during the inception phase. The framework for this would need to be clearly set out in an appropriate Service Level Agreement ( SLA).

8.61 Any staffed service would need to be supported by a well-designed website to provide a point of reference and guidance materials. This should enable some queries and requests to be answered without the need to speak to a member of the team. The design and accessibility of this website will be critical to its success. The ATLAS website is a good example of a clearly laid out and informative website, which provides guidance on processes and specific topics as well as case study examples. A website providing information and guidance on handling national and major applications within the Scottish system could be a stand-alone product, or could sit within either the Scottish Government website or that of the local government Improvement Service.

8.62 As with the English system, we would advise that access to these advisory services should be free of charge and should be available to all stakeholders involved in the planning process i.e. developers, local authorities, statutory consultees and others.