Stafford council set to spend an extra £234k on agency staff and consultants as part of action to improve planning service
Senior Stafford Borough councillors have agreed to spend an extra £234,000 on agency staff and consultancy support while work to improve its planning service is carried out.
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The authority has faced overspends in its planning department in recent years while working to tackle a backlog of applications.
Costs have included recruitment of agency staff. Councillor Ant Reid. cabinet member for economic development and planning, speaking last year, said that the service had struggled to recruit to vacancies due to the wider national shortage of experienced planners.
Stafford Borough Council commissioned an external independent review of the service last year. Mondrem, a not-for profit social enterprise whose purpose is to improve public services. carried out the review and an improvement plan has been produced.
On Thursday (May 15) council cabinet members noted the review findings and improvement plan. They also recommended that the full council agrees to draw down £234,790 from planning/fee reserves to “fund agency staff to maintain service delivery whilst the improvement plan is being implemented and funding for consultancy support to support delivery of the improvement plan.”
A report to the cabinet said the funding would be in addition to that already approved in the 2025/26 budget earlier this year. It added: “The output of the review is an improvement plan for the next 12 months, including clear recommendations, actions, and resource requirements.
“High levels of work-in-progress remains a major barrier to making changes happen, despite intense and successful efforts to reduce the number of undetermined applications on hand. Responding to ‘failure demand’ caused by high levels of work in progress requires additional resources and costs the service more money.
“The (development management) service has seen a phased reduction of agency staff over the last 12 months. A number of appointments have been made to the team at Planning Assistant and Planning Officer level which has filled vacancies, improved capacity and reduced the reliance on agency staff – there is currently one agency senior planner providing additional capacity for 30 hours per week.
“Despite the recent appointments, there will be a need to continue with some agency staff during 2025/26. It will be necessary to extend the current Agency Team Leader post which is covering the vacant Deputy Development Manager role.
“It will also be necessary to appoint an agency Senior Planning Officer following the recent resignation of a Senior Planning Officer. To ensure continuity and resilience it is proposed to retain the use of the agency senior planner for 30 hours per week, and the agency team leader for 37 hours per week for a period of six months.
“To support delivery of the planning improvement plan, Mondrem have been retained to provide additional support to the team in relation to project management, governance, data analysis, process improvement. The cost of this support is £26,000 and will be funded from the additional budget requested which will be funded from planning fee reserve income.”
