Productivity & Resource Review

Future-proof your planning service with a PAS ‘Productivity & Resource Review'


Resources are at the top of most council's priorities at the moment and this builds on our many years of experience doing benchmarking, performance and improvement work with councils.  

We're just still finalising the first set of outputs with our pilot councils which we'll share more widely early in the new year (in the meantime have a quick look at Martin Hutching's blog to get a flavour for the work we're doing).

Read below for more information and how to get in touch. If, like many councils you are currently reviewing resources, we could save you a lot of time and effort.  

Do you find yourself asking these questions…

  • How do we deliver the best service we can and continue to improve with the resources we have?
  • Is our structure right? 
  • How much work should we expect to get through? 
  • What would it take to make our planning service self-financing? 
  • How would our service fare in a competitive planning market?
  • How do we protect the service if the council subsidy disappears? 
 
PAS's Productivity & Resource Review can help
These questions are difficult to answer without a good evidence base. We're working with individual and groups of councils to help them understand the relationship between costs, income, productivity and performance so that they can make good decisions for the future in a world of constantly changing demands on resources.
 
How does it work, and what do we get?
We ask you to provide key information about your resourcing, costs and work (the things in your control like salaries and income).  In return we give provide you with a report containing important financial, quality and productivity measures, along with a set of recommendations from a PAS consultant in simple straightforward language that tells you: 
  • How are you using resources?
  • What are you achieving?
  • Are you getting the most from your resources?
  • What opportunities are there to increase income, reduce waste, and/or make savings?
  • What are the key risks to your resources?
It's ideal for councils wanting to routinely assess how well they are performing, for maintaining improvement, making decisions about change and for more strategic projects between groups of councils – anything that requires a sound financial baseline. 
 
Quality and experience built-in
The new productivity review from PAS builds on many years of benchmarking and improvement work with councils. 
 
What's involved?
We'll ask you to supply 2 sets of data in easy to use templates that we provide:
  • A list of planning applications (a download of data from your back office)
  • A summary of the costs under your control   
We'll then make a summary report, check with you that the data looks right and once we're all happy, issue a working report containing the thoughts and observations of a PAS consultant. The report may prompt you to take action or look at certain things in more detail. You may like PAS or someone else you trust to help you act on the findings in the report.
 
What does it cost?
We'll be creating a range of ways of delivering the Productivity and Resource Review to suit different councils requirements and budgets. You can expect to pay in the region of £3k for a basic report, and up to £5k for a report with commentary and analysis.  
 

For more information contact Martin Hutchings on 07917 202 319.