Planning performance agreements
Dear Oxford City Council,
I am writing to make an open government request for all the information to which I am entitled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The request is in relation to planning performance agreements.
1. Who is responsible for negotiating planning performance agreements?
2. Who is budget holder for agreements?
3. How many agreements have been put in place in the last 5 years and with who?
4. How much income for each agreement?
5. What additional services were provided for each agreement? Additional services are those over and above the work done as part of a standard planning application.
Yours faithfully,
Mr C Burns
Oxford City Council – Reference: 10501
Dear Mr Burns
Thank you for your email below. Your request was received on 19th October 2021 and you will be sent a response within 20 working days (of receipt) in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000/ Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR), subject to the information not being exempt or containing reference to a third party.
Yours sincerely,
Joyce Fagan
Information Governance Requests Officer
Joyce Fagan | Information Governance Requests Officer | Oxford City Council | Law and Governance | St. Aldate's Chambers | Oxford | OX1 1DS |
Email: [email address] T: 01865 252 425
My working days are Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays
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Dear Mr Burns,
Further to the acknowledgement below, I can respond to your Freedom of Information Act 2000 request received on 19th October 2021 as follows:
1. Who is responsible for negotiating planning performance agreements?
A number of officers in the service. Head of Service; Development Management Team Manager; Development Management Team Managers; Principal and Senior Planning Officers.
2. Who is budget holder for agreements?
Head of Service
3. How many agreements have been put in place in the last 5 years and with who?
Approximately 24 agreements with a variety of parties
Network Rail
Oxford University Estates
Oxford University Development Ltd
Thomas White Ltd
Hertford College
Said Business School
St Hildas College
Nuffield College
Magdalen College
Christ Church College
Rhodes House
OXWED
Oxford Brookes University
Oxford City Homes Ltd
Oxford Direct Services
Catalyst Housing Association
River Learning Trust
CALA Homes
Redrow
Shaviram Group
Reef
Frontier Estates
Parthings Farm Management & Promotions Ltd
4. How much income for each agreement?
The total PPA income is as follows
Total Received
2016/2017 138,833
2017/2018 230,887
2018/2019 95,117
2019/2020 277,455
2020/2021 298,499
Total £1,040,791
5. What additional services were provided for each agreement? Additional services are those over and above the work done as part of a standard planning application.
The PPA's do not provide additional services beyond what you would expect to provide at pre-application and application stage. They are a set of shared commitments with respect to the expected levels of service, and also to work to the developers programme through the various gateways of the process, pre-application advice to the submission of their application (at pre-application stage) and sometimes post application.
If you disagree with any part of the response to your request, you are entitled to ask the Council for an internal review of the decision(s) made. You may do this by writing to the Monitoring Officer, by either email – [email address] – or by post to Monitoring Officer, Oxford City Council, St Aldate’s Chambers, St Aldate’s, Oxford, OX1 1DS. After the result of the internal review, if you remain dissatisfied, you may ask the Information Commissioner to intervene on your behalf. You may do this by writing to the Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.
Yours sincerely,
Joyce Fagan
Information Governance Requests Officer
Joyce Fagan | Information Governance Requests Officer | Oxford City Council | Law and Governance | St. Aldate's Chambers | Oxford | OX1 1DS |
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Dear freedomofinformation,
Thank you for your reply to my FOI.
Like all other councils who have responded in full to the same FOI, I would be grateful if you could provide a breakdown of income per PPA. I would also be grateful if you could qualify your comments on additional resources. If no additional resources are factored into PPAs, why is additional income being received?
Yours sincerely,
Mr C Burns
Dear Mr Burns,
Thank you for your email below. Please be advised that this question has been passed on to the relevant service to respond to.
Yours sincerely,
Joyce Fagan
Information Governance Requests Officer
Joyce Fagan | Information Governance Requests Officer | Oxford City Council | Law and Governance | St. Aldate's Chambers | Oxford | OX1 1DS |
Stop the virus from spreading. Keep Oxford safe.
Follow the guidance: Clean hands. Wear a face mask. Keep your distance. Get tested if you have symptoms.
Dear Mr Burns,
Please find reply to your follow on questions relating to FOI number 10501.
I am of the opinion that retrieving the information you require would possibly exceed 18.5 working hours and consider Section 12 of the FOIA could apply in this instance.
Section 12 of the Act makes provision for public authorities to refuse requests for information where the cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate limit, which for local government is set at £450. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 2.5 working days in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.
1. Breakdown of incoming via PPA
We only keep the information readily accessible in the format provided to you. To break this down further would require considerable amount of officer time, which would lead to us applying the exemption that this would take more than the 18.5 hours of officer time. Therefore in order to provide you with this information we have provided this in the most accessible format that we have which reflects the income received through PPAs.
2. If no additional resources are factored into PPAs, why is additional income being received?
The original question was 'what additional services'. There is a clear distinction between services and resources. The purpose of a PPA is to provide a framework between parties about the process for considering major development proposals. The nature of the PPA will depend on the complexity of the case and also the programme that the applicant is working to and some include an element of project management to them.
The original answer we provided to the question of what additional service would stand. In terms of resources, we have used a varying range of PPAs over the last 5 years to help deliver what has been a significant growth agenda on some key strategic sites and schemes. A number of these have had various iterations and changes to payment schedules through the lifetime of these projects which is why we do not have all of the information sought in question 1 in a more granular format to what has been provided.
The scope of the PPA has depended on the complexity of the case. The PPAs provide a commitment to working through the issues that will arise from a proposal and cover all aspects of that process, pre-application discussions which help to develop and evolve schemes and include a full range of specialist advice; to the planning application programme (not including the planning fee); and post application whether that be through discussing conditions to subsequent applications. The fees are all calculated with our published pre-application charging schedule as a starting point, but also a view on cost recovery to help work to the timelines sought by the various applicants. There have been other agreements where we have had key stakeholders identify a capital programme for multiple sites, or a significant urban extension, or infrastructure programme where they have been used to provide funding for a specific resource (i.e. officers) to service those agreements. A number of project specific PPA's then come forward through those overarching agreements which do not have project specific fees attached to them because they are captured as part of the main agreement.
In a city like Oxford that has seen a considerable amount of growth in what is a constrained city, the PPAs are a valuable method of managing this process and recover costs for providing this service.
Yours sincerely,
Joyce Fagan
Information Governance Requests Officer
Joyce Fagan | Information Governance Requests Officer | Oxford City Council | Law and Governance | St. Aldate's Chambers | Oxford | OX1 1DS |
Stop the virus from spreading. Keep Oxford safe.
Follow the guidance: Clean hands. Wear a face mask. Keep your distance. Get tested if you have symptoms.
Dear Oxford City Council,
Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.
I am writing to request an internal review of Oxford City Council's handling of my FOI request 'Planning performance agreements'.
To date I have made 100 FOI requests relating to PPAs and the vast majority of responses received have provided all information requested, including those from councils larger than Oxford who have entered into more PPAs.
Responses have shown that PPAs are far from common when considering the number of planning applications dealt with by councils. Where PPAs are entered into, there should be no reason why the information surrounding them should be difficult to provide. On this basis, please disclose all information requested.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/p...
Yours faithfully,
Mr C Burns
Dear Mr Burns,
Thank you for your email. This has been passed on to the relevant Manager.
Yours sincerely,
Joyce Fagan
Information Governance Requests Officer
Joyce Fagan | Information Governance Requests Officer | Oxford City Council | Law and Governance | St. Aldate's Chambers | Oxford | OX1 1DS |
Stop the virus from spreading. Keep Oxford safe.
Follow the guidance: Clean hands. Wear a face mask. Keep your distance. Get tested if you have symptoms.
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