Agenda item

To discuss the following matters raised by Local Councils:

• Planning Enforcement Cases – Local Councils have requested statistics on the number of planning enforcement cases dealt with and resulting compliance levels.

A schedule of statistics is attached.

• Complaints against Parish Councillors – At the last meeting of the Liaison Committee it was suggested in relation to complaints made by town/parish councillors about other members that joint working between the Standards Committee and the Epping Forest Association of Local Councils might lead to resolution of these problems as an alternative to the formal complaints procedure. This matter was raised at the meeting of the Epping Forest Association of Local Councils and it was generally felt that it was unnecessary to add another tier to the complaints procedure.

• Functionality of the Iplan system – Director of Planning and Economic Development to report on a meeting held on 12 November between officers and local councils representative, with further request that hard copies of prospective planning applications and associated plans are dispatched by the District Council.

• Recycling – Local councils request that confirmation is given that every single household has a recyclable bin, an update on the current position regarding waste collection services for village halls and a review of free collection from village halls.

A response from District Council officers is attached.

• Local Highways Panel – Local councils request that the Local Highways Panel examine liaison between the District Council and the Highways Department of Essex County Council regarding highways damage.

A response from District Council officers is attached.

(a)        Planning Enforcement Cases

Mr C Neilan, Landscape Officer and Arboriculturist, presented planning enforcement statistics.

As of 9 November 2009, over the past year, there had been 711 investigations of planning enforcement started, 630 investigations were completed in that period with 437 investigations on hand at the current time. As of 9 November 2009 there were 130 investigations completed on resolution of a breach of planning control.

C Neilan advised that local councils sometimes made duplicate complaints about the same breach. C Neilan could not confirm how many had been successful or how many cases there had been as they overlapped year on year. Members felt that some enforcement cases seemed prolonged. They also indicated that they would like an interim report on the situation of any particular action at any one time. C Neilan said that these were normally produced if requested.

(b)       Complaints against Parish Councillors

At the last meeting of the Committee it was suggested that in relation to complaints made by town and parish councillors against other members, joint working between the Standards Committee and the Epping Forest Association of Local Councils could lead to resolution of these problems as an alternative to the formal complaints procedure. This was raised at the Epping Forest Association of local councils and was generally felt that it was unnecessary adding another tier to the complaints procedure.

RESOLVED:

That D Macnab advise the District Council’s Monitoring Officer and Deputy Monitoring Officer of this conclusion.

(c)        Functionality of the Iplan System

At the last meeting of the committee the members had resolved that dialogue was required between the Director of Planning and Economic Development, key ICT officers and local council representatives. To this end, a meeting had been arranged for 12 November 2009. The members had requested that paper copies of plans should still be used for local councils, as well as the electronic scanned version. There was also concern that paper files were going to be destroyed, the Cabinet at its meeting on 16 November had discussed this particular issue. They had concluded that file destruction was considered a proportionate response once they had been electronically scanned. Councillor C Pond advised that it would be good practice to liaise with Essex County Record Office regarding best practice on archiving.

RESOLVED:

That Planning and Economic Development officers liaise with Essex County Record Office regarding advice on archiving of planning files.

(d)       Recycling

(i)         Waste from Village Halls

The Cabinet at its meeting in April 2009 considered a report from the Environment Portfolio Holder on the arrangements for the collection of household waste from schools, religious establishments and charitable institutions. Village halls were not expressly mentioned, although they were within the same collection regime. The matter was discussed at the Local Council’s Liaison Committee in July 2009.

As the Council developed its budgetary framework for 2010/11 it was intended that a report should be submitted as part of the normal fees and charges consideration and the views of the Committee that a charge for village halls was inappropriate would be put before the Finance and Performance Scrutiny Panel and the Cabinet Committee. It was intended that a full service proposal should be in place for village halls from April 2010. Members advised that some village halls were administered by a Management Committee and were not owned by the local council, subsequently the village hall paid rates. Mr J Gilbert, Director of Environment and Street Scene, said that the Cabinet would need to make an individual decision with regards to village halls. J Gilbert could not confirm the rates for 2010/11 as they had not yet been decided.

(ii)        Food an Garden Wheeled Bins

The Committee was informed that there had been unfortunate delays in providing new food and garden waste wheeled bins to some residents. It was felt that problems such as this were inevitable. However officers were disappointed that in some cases delays had been significant and there remained some residents who did not have the correct container. Additional resources had been made available with 2 crews from Sita employed full time to deal with the backlog. The new scheme was already demonstrating a high level of performance, with recycling levels exceeding 60% for the first 3 weeks of the scheme. It was hoped that, assuming the level of participation continued, the 2009/10 outturn would be in the region of 50%.

(e)       Local Highways Panel

Mr J Gilbert advised that at the last meeting of the Committee, concerns were raised regarding the abilities of either the District Council, using its planning enforcement role, or the County Council as Highways Authority, to deal with damage to highway surfaces from developers. It was suggested that the matter was referred to the Local Highways Panel on 24 November.