Never Look a 'GIRFT' Horse in the Mouth

Whilst listening to an interview with the health minister on the Today Programme this week, I heard a new acronym which I hadn’t come across before. ‘GIRFT’. Which stands for ‘Getting it Right First Time’. It is a National Programme through the NHS which is designed to improve treatment and care through an in-depth review of services, benchmarking and presenting a data-driven evidence base to support change.

I wonder which Management Consultants got paid a load of money to come up with that? Clearly there is a lot that the NHS does get right but a lot it could do better and certainly this current government are fast becoming experts in U-Turns and certainly not "GIRFTing" (yeah, I think it can be a present participle?).

But it got me thinking, could ‘GIRFT’ be applied to the planning industry? and how?

So firstly, how does the planning system not GIRFT at present. Well clearly, as happened to me just last week (and no doubt has happened to lots of you many times before), I had an officer recommendation for approval overturned by committee. And yes, I am still *%$?ing annoyed about it. Of course, committees are there to scrutinise decisions and are entitled to come to a different decision to that of their officers. But all too often, logical and cogent officer recommendations are overturned by planning committees without justification and reason. The consequences? Well obviously, the right of appeal kicks in and we will certainly be doing exactly that. The officers who recommended the application then have to defend the committee decision. That appeal may or may not be allowed. But when it is, where is the accountability from those who made that decision in the first place?

In fact, it was in my last blog post that I wrote about a consultation this time last year from MHCLG on modernising planning committees.This has since been absorbed into the Planning and Infrastructure Act which introduces a new national scheme of delegation, requires training for planning committee members and controls the size of planning committees.

We’ll also see significant changes to committees as part of Local Government Reorganisation as set out in the Draft Structural Changes Order (SCO) referred to in this briefing from Tandridge Council.

If these changes lead to more opportunities to GIRFT then I’m all for it.

Local Authorities which see more that 10% of their decisions on applications overturned in a rolling 24 month period are at risk of being placed in special measures under section 62 A of the Town and Country Planning Act. However, as at 2026 only two councils (Bristol City and Lewes) are in special measures on account of performance of decision making.  As a result. applicants can chose to apply directly PINs to have their applications determined rather than the local authority. Would you? No, didn’t think so.

Of course, even if a council is not in special measures they remain at risk of having costs applications made against them as part of planning appeals. Again, the reality is that an appellant must show that a council has behaved unreasonably and that bar is set pretty high. Nevertheless, councils must still shoulder the burden of defending any appeals (unless they of course claim for and win costs) but also deal with the inevitable strain on planning department resources. A regular local authority haunt of mine ('which I won’t name') reported to its members last year that the forecast spending for planning appeals in 2024/25 was considerably higher than the £150,000 within its budget and came in at……..er……£950,000. This is a small authority which is hardly flush with cash in any event. The result? The shortfall would have to be found from cuts to budgets in other departments. Would a bit of GIRFTing help reduce that overspend? Most probably.   

Of course, it doesn’t end there and we know of many appeal decisions that go on to be challenged through the courts. Any regular viewers of HIGPNFY will be well aware of the complexities of that process. Other sectors of our industry do their bit to avoid court proceedings through established dispute resolution procedures and perhaps there is more of a role for that. Or maybe just a bit more GIRFT.

And it isn’t just applications where things don’t go right first time. Several Local Plans have been thrown out by inspectors due to systemic failures which cannot be remedied through modifications. Some recent high profile scraps in that process include Horsham, with the leader of the council calling the inspectors decision ‘maverick’. Before that, Sevenoaks had a ding dong with the planning inspectorate and launched a JR against the Inspectors decision to junk the plan. I can understand why those councils got so ‘Salty” (as my 16 year old daughter would say). Local Plans costs councils a lot of money and to be told they must ‘go to jail and not pass go’ at such a late stage must be pretty gutting all round.

However recent missives from South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse joint local plan suggests a more conciliatory mood. That plan was previously found unsound by PINs on basis of failures concerning the Duty to Cooperate. However, seeing as the government removed DtC from the examination process in Autumn last year, the latest communique refers to forthcoming meetings between the council and inspectors to try and find away forward. So not all is lost and perhaps they might GIRFT after all.

But GIRFT in the planning process is not just for councils. Applicants can play their part and are increasingly also ‘paying’ their part too. An increasing number of councils now charge applicants a fee for invalid planning applications. Woking for example charge £225 for invalid major applications and £150 for minor ones.

As council resources become increasingly stretched we will likely see more of this and certainly puts the onus on applicants, and importantly their planning consultants, to GIRFT.

So, there you go. My two New Years Resolutions:

1.        Blog More

2.        GIRFT!

AB – My Own Thoughts