When consultants for the Planning Department move into place on 6 April, they will begin an all-encompassing audit of their organisation and, based on the contents of the resulting report, “people will have to fall in line or fall away,” Leader of Government Business, Hon Kurt Tibbetts, said recently.

Making himself very clear as to how all encompassing the audit would be Mr Tibbetts said, “No one in any position (in the Planning Department) will be left out of the audit.” He said this at a weekly Media Briefing by Cabinet Members on Thursday 16 March.

At that meeting he said that the consultants would arrive within the next two weeks to begin working on ascertaining, among other things, the “Adequacy of Planning Department Programmes and Employee Attitudes.” According to Mr Tibbetts, the audit exercise will also include “analysing the Department’s internal and external organisation.

They (the consultants) will also be reviewing permits, the Department’s functions and the Department’s tracking systems, as well as carrying out a Management Review.” He said the consulting exercise would identify where changes in policy procedures, staffing and training would be needed.

“The study will include recommendations for automation systems, electrical training and records management,” Mr Tibbetts said. There are also plans for the consultants to meet the Department’s employees and meet with the private sector as well.

From all of this, the consultants are expected to hand over a report by mid June 2006 – one from which a positive course of action for the Department can be derived. This audit is only one prong of a solutions strategy, recently adopted, to deal with problems that have weakened the Department’s image and output over the past many months.

As recently as 24 February, at another weekly Media Briefing, Mr Tibbetts confessed that the complaints about the Planning Department’s low output levels in relation to the approval of applications were not going away – despite his regular meetings with staff and several attempts to sort out the problem.

On that date he described the other prong of the strategy – the temporary assignment of independent Examiners and Inspectors from overseas on contract. On 24 February Mr Tibbetts had announced that as a result of the Department’s problem, “consideration was being given to contracting independent overseas experts, on a short term basis, to help clear the backlog and sort out the Department’s problems.”

Now, at the most recent Media Briefing held on 24 March, Mr Tibbetts announced that some of the overseas experts were on Island. He said that two, of approximately seven Plans Examiners and Inspectors had arrived in the week of 20 March to help the Department reduce the backlog of Building

Permit reviews and Inspections – a situation that has plagued the Department in the post-Ivan burst of construction activity on the Islands. He said the other five experts were expected “over the next week or so.”

Mr Tibbetts said the overseas contingent will include one Combination Plans Examiner for electrical and structural work and this person was already on Island. He said one of the two Electrical Inspectors was already on Island as well.

The rest of the overseas contingent will include one Plans Examiner, for electrical work – scheduled to arrive on 29 March; one Plans Examiner for structural work – arriving 1 April; and one Structural Inspector – arriving in the first week of April.

Even ahead of the results of the major audit and consulting exercise Mr Tibbetts said the Department was going ahead with a “staff recruitment campaign.” He said the Department was currently “reviewing several applications to increase the Department’s technical staff by four, that is, one Structural Inspector, two Electrical Inspectors and one Electrical Plans Examiner.”

Mr Tibbetts acknowledged that the consultants, the temporary assignment of overseas experts and the additional staff would “require additional funding.” However, he added, “based on the volume of work at the Department, as well as the calls I receive (to do with) concerns about the Department, I am sure the additional funding will be money well spent.