Issue - meetings

(Director of Planning and Economic Development). To consider the attached report.

The Panel received a report from Mr N Richardson, Assistant Director of Planning and Economic Development, regarding recommended alterations to officer delegation to improve planning performance against targets.

At the last meeting of the Panel, members had requested officers to suggest alterations to delegated powers for planning applications and enforcement matters in CL36 and CL56 respectively. The Panel considered recommended changes to the following:

(a)        Enforcement (Ref CL36 Paragraph 1)

Delegation CL36 (1) set out delegated authority to issue enforcement notices, stop notices, contravention notices etc, but if officers wished to serve a discontinuance notice to remove an advert, it currently required Area Plans Committee authorisation. Such action was likely to be rare, but, given that full planning enforcement action was delegated, it appeared not unreasonable for a discontinuance notice to be delegated as well. The Panel supported this.

(b)       Planning Applications (Ref CL56 Para 1, Sch A (f))

The current Delegation CL56 stated that planning applications were determined by the Director of Planning and Economic Development except in certain circumstances when they were instead determined by committee. This includes the following in Part (f) of Schedule A which currently reads:

“Applications recommended for approval on which there was more than one expression of an objection material to the planning merits of the proposal to be approved other than householder applications.”

In order to secure improved performance in NI157c officers recommended reviewing this to “two” rather than “one” expression of an objection, and expand in the case of householder applications to include “other applications.” The Panel agreed but with wording revised from that suggested in the report by officers. The following revised wording formulated by officers was suggested to read as follows:

“Apart from approvals for householder and “other” applications, those applications recommended for approval where there are more than two expressions of objections material to the planning merits of the proposal be approved.”

The Panel noted that “other” applications included changes of use, householder development, adverts, listed building consents, conservation area consents, lawful development certificates, agricultural notifications, telecommunications masts, shop fronts and vehicular crossovers. Officers stated that the Council was very close in achieving the challenging target of 93% set for this category, of planning applications, but there were some low contentious applications that went before a Committee despite no objections raised by Parish or Town Councils which could have been avoided and otherwise dealt with in time.

(c)        Paragraph 1, Schedule A - Proposed Additional Section

Paragraph 1 Schedule A – It was also suggested that an additional section (m) should be added as follows:

“Applications for extensions to the time limit for implementing planning permission, listed building consents or conservation area consents, unless there had been no changes to material considerations, including planning policy from when the permission was granted.”

The Panel noted that developers with planning permission granted up until 30 September 2009 where the time limit for implementation had not expired, could apply to extend their permissions. This allowed applicants to apply for new planning  ...  view the full minutes text for item 57