Issue - meetings

To receive an update from Development Management’s Southern Area Manager on, and give consideration to, the progress of the Development Management Transformation Project

The Committee considered a report from the Southern Area Manager updating it on the Development Management Transformation Project. The report set out what Development Management’s current activity and future plans were. The objective of the Development Management Transformation Project was to introduce new robust IT hardware and to standardise all of the historic records inherited from the former legacy authorities onto one system. It was also concerned with transforming the Council’s working practices to make them more efficient, and to deliver a new staffing structure that would be fit for purpose as well as meeting budget targets.

The report stated that completion of the project was scheduled for April 2011 to tie in with staffing restructure which was also due to be completed by that time. However this target had not been met and the project was still incomplete. The project suffered a number of delays; unfortunately as a result a number of project milestones were missed which had a knock on effect on the project as a whole. At the date on the meeting work completed included; new IT hardware infrastructure; planning system upgrade & new module software implementation; existing legacy data from Crewe & Nantwich/Congleton/County IT systems converted onto one system; and single consolidated document management system installed.

There were still a number of outstanding issues and work which had not yet been delivered. These had been logged and were being dealt with accordingly. Re-planned work was underway via separate mini-projects and other smaller problems had been identified and logged to ensure that they were resolved with agreed timescales.

Delivery of benefits from the project had already been realised in respect of staffing restructure which had delivered budget savings and further cost savings from the decommissioning of existing legacy systems would take place be actualised in 2012.

RESOLVED: That the report be noted.