Reducing Demand for Planners - Rodney District Council Case Study
Lloyd Barton
Introduction to Rodney
- Growth
- Significant growth
- Approximately 21 planners, plus 4 new positions
- How has the shortage of planners affected us?
- Extended time frames for both resource consents and making Proposed Plan operative
- High work load
- Reduced quality of work
- Complaints from applicants
- Increased costs from consultants
- Reduced morale
Solutions
- Making the most of the planners you have got
- Getting structure right - number of staff/career development
- Off shore recruitment
1. Making the most of the planners you have got
- Re-allocating work
- Front line customer advice - Development Advisory officers
- LIMs - Administration officers
- Building consents assessment - Technical officers
- Tree applications - Arborist/Ecologist
- Case management
- Experienced planners
2. Getting structure right
- On-going career development important
- Integrated consents and policy formulation
- More opportunity for consent planners to do policy work and policy planners to do consent work
- Takes into account 4 well beings (social, economic, cultural and environment)
- Joint KPIs between consents and policy mangers
- Career progression, 3 steps between graduate and senior planning level
- Graduates from planning related fields
- Number of FTEs to match workload
3. Off shore recruitment
- Adds to pool of experienced planners in NZ & avoids ‘poaching’
- Successful in 2004
- UK job fairs in 2005
Conclusion
- No quick fix
- Wise use of planning resource important
Last updated: 16 January 2009
