Planning and Environmental Appeals Division: annual review 2024 to 2025

Who We Are

Areas, Roles and Staffing Levels

DPEA has different teams that are responsible for different aspects of the work that DPEA is responsible for.

• Casework team: The casework team support reporters and are responsible for maintaining information relating to cases on our website, dealing with correspondence between parties and reporters, and the processing of documents submitted by parties. Case officers are supported by section managers and team leaders who deal with a variety of work including responding to queries such as Freedom of Information requests, working closely with planning authorities and updating guidance when necessary.
• Scottish Government Reporters: Reporters are impartial decision makers who are responsible for decided cases and the evidence submitted by parties. In some cases, reporters will not decide the appeal but submit and report with a recommendation to the Scottish Ministers. Reporters have varied professional backgrounds in planning.
• Self-Employed Reporters: Self-employed reporters are contracted on a case by case basis and have the same responsibilities as Scottish Government reporters.
• IT and Finance team: The IT and finance team are responsible for providing IT support to the casework team and reporters, to allow them to carry out their roles as best they can. This work can involve webcasting hearings and inquiries, working alongside developers and stakeholders to maintain and improve our systems and providing support to members of the public with using our systems.

Our office in Falkirk is open to our staff working a hybrid working pattern and in line with the Scottish Government Hybrid Working Policy. Our organisational chart at Appendix B shows our management and administrative structure.

Our reporters are listed at Appendix C. Although they are home based, they are in regular contact with members of the casework support team and work closely with them. Reporters have a variety of professional backgrounds, albeit most are planners.

Staff Engagement, Learning and Development

Every year staff are invited to take part in a Civil Service wide staff survey that asks questions on leadership and managing change, their work, their line manager, pay and benefits, resources and workload, learning and development, organisational objectives and purpose, inclusion and fair treatment and their team.

Overall, the results showed a continued improvement from 2023 to 2024 and compare favourably with wider Scottish Government and Civil Service results.

We continue to focus on learning and development and the wellbeing of all staff. Resilience building being the focus to all working practices going forward.

To achieve this, we have continued to encourage development, encouraging training opportunities, job shadowing, diversifying knowledge by learning new things, discussions around developing the business by using individuals' skillsets to move this forward, rotating team members in change discussions allowing for shared knowledge, upskilling and training opportunities being made available. We continue to improve processes as change happens to ensure that DPEA remain as up to date with knowledge as possible, engaging with staff and stakeholders to ensure inclusion in decisions being made. Mentoring is still a big part of the day job, helping others through processes they may not be used to as the team compliment is increased to meet the demand for the year ahead.

We made a commitment to ensure that all staff are kept up to date with relevant information, from an organisational and business day to day level, so monthly emails are sent out, covering topics of interest, links to helpful websites and general information relating to all civil service benefits. These have helped to increase awareness as well as opened doors to new opportunities for some team members.