Agenda item

(Assistant Director of Governance) To consider the report attached.

The Assistant Director of Governance advised that the agenda report was a discussion document that would be the beginning of a review process and require consultation with other parties. The Council had adopted the new Corporate Plan, in which a commitment had been given to undertake a review of its Governance arrangements. The governance review would look at the structure of the Council’s Cabinet and committees to increase efficiency and decision making.

 

At the last meeting in September 2017, members had agreed that the focus of this meeting would be to consider:

 

(i)      Officer delegations;

 

(ii)     How objections are considered and resolved;

 

(iii)    How objections trigger a member review;

 

(iv)   Committee systems for members considering planning applications; and

 

(v)    Style of officer reports.

 

Local Plan Update

 

The Interim Assistant Director of Planning Policy provided a brief update on the current status of the new Local Plan (LP). Importantly, there was likely to be a surge in planning applications after the adoption of the LP to meet the Council’s projected housing target to cover the period up to 2033. This was of course subject to the LP having been independently examined and finally approved by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. A report to Cabinet on 7 December 2017 had agreed to an Implementation Team to ensure the effective delivery of the required growth in housing. A key consideration of the review was the need to match available staffing resources to ensure that they would be used in the most effective way.

 

The submission version (Regulation 19) consultation of the LP would close on 29 January 2018. Five hundred representations had so far been received but many more were expected. A large number of sites were coming forward. On the larger ones, there were nine masterplan sites and two concept areas. There would be a process to manage the masterplans and applications for the larger developments, with a requirement to commit resources to take the masterplans forward. Members would want to be involved in this process which would include presentations during the early stages from the masterplan applicants. This would give applicants the opportunity to go away and check that their masterplans were more to what members would prefer, which would result in higher quality schemes. A panel of seventeen professionals had been set up to give critical advice to the Local Planning Authority (LPA) to improve the quality of the applications coming before members, and to ensure members would have more engagement at meetings.

 

Councillor C C Pond asked if it was likely during the passage of the LP through the examination process that additional sites might become available for masterplanning. The Interim Assistant Director of Planning Policy replied that the Inspector might require additional sites only if he/she was concerned that the housing quantity could not be met. Councillor J Philip added that the Council progressed masterplanning in June 2017. If there were other sites then these could be considered, they did not have to be in the LP. The Assistant Director of Governance advised that members would want to be involved in the masterplanning process.

Officer delegations

 

The Assistant Director of Governance outlined the current delegations detailed in Appendix 1 of this report. It set out those applications which could be determined by officers with a number of circumstances where member determination was required (Appendix A).. The current reality of the delegation scheme was that many of those applications decided by members did not meet the target of determination within eight weeks of receipt, whereas those determined by officers did. Item 14 of the Constitution, Article 10 – District Development Management Committee and Area Plans Sub-Committees – detailed the planning committees’ structure and Terms of Reference.

 

Householder applications caused the most issues. Between November 2016 to October 2017, 283 applications had been published in the planning committees’ agendas, of which 109 were for householder applications. Of those 14 were refused, so a lot of time had been taken up with them. The Working Group was asked to consider if this was a good use of members’ time at the committees. It was noted that over 2,000 applications were submitted to the LPA each year, each requiring a written report by officers, scrutiny by a senior officer, and additional feedback from planning officer colleagues.

 

The following points were raised during discussion amongst members.

 

Councillor C C Pond was not in favour of making it more difficult for neighbour objections to come to committee.

 

Councillor G Chambers felt that perhaps only ward members should call-in an application.

 

Councillor J Philip said that comments made by residents were valid. Applications could be very contentious. Also in Area Plans East and West there were single member wards. Just looking at the statistics did not give a good view. He wouldn’t want to take too much away from the ability of the planning committees. He suggested a higher bar when something from the parish councils came to committee. Perhaps it would help if there was more consultation between the parish/town councils and ward members.

 

Councillor C C Pond agreed, especially where the local council objected, but this was unsupported by residents. If the local council was the only objector, unless a representative from that parish/town council registered to speak, then this shouldn’t be allowed to proceed to committee. He added that when he was chairman of Loughton Town Council’s Planning and Licensing Committee, members might not have necessarily wanted to ‘object’ but instead expressed a ‘concern’ to bring it to the planning officer’s attention.

 

Councillor J Philip said that this could apply to neighbour objections. Local councils could go to the Planning Officer with their objections / concerns. Also at Theydon Bois there were two levels of objectors, those that wrote in and speakers.

 

Councillor M Sartin added that parish clerks needed more in-depth training.

 

Councillor G Chambers remarked that you could mitigate objections with other conditions at committee. Generally, he would like to see less applications coming to Area Plans South.

 

Councillor J Philip said that at Theydon Bois there were two levels of objectors, those that wrote in and speakers.

 

Councillor D Dorrell said that if the parish council had made the only objection but it was not a valid objection then the application should now not go forward to committee as it would be dealt with by officers under delegated powers.

 

The Assistant Director of Governance asked on parish councils, what were the options? Should representations be made through the parish council or alternatively through the local member? Four weeks (see Appendix A (h)) could be relaxed at any point before the application was determined. In the householder category, did they want to alter the number of objections required (Appendix A (f))?

 

Councillor C C Pond restated that if there was a parish council objection only:

(a)    the parish council must declare its intention to come and speak; or

(b)    would not be the only objector.

Also he thought that more than four expressions of interest should be received in both cases, which Councillor M McEwen also agreed with.

 

The Principal Planning Officer emphasised that planning applications already required four or more objections material to planning merits, which officers did condition, and added that most referrals for householder applications were parish council objections.

 

When members reached point 9 (of the Planning Process Review 2017/18 report, page 48) that detailed columns for the ‘current referral condition’ and correlated ‘discussion points’ members made a number of suggestions. The Assistant Director of Governance thanked members for there input and officers would try and come up with a scheme that pulled all the delegation into one place. An amended report would come back to a future meeting of the Constitution Working Group to look at again.

 

Local Plan implementation

 

The Interim Assistant Director of Planning Policy explained that Planning Policy was looking at the level of member engagement in masterplanning and at what stages. Planning Policy was therefore setting out the parameters and would be suggesting regular updates to show members where they reached. The intention was to involve ward councillors and provide a regular progress report to the District Development Management Committee.

 

Councillor J H Whitehouse asked about what type of comments could councillors make.

 

The Interim Assistant Director replied that this could encompass the design, layout questions and access etc. Many authorities organised these briefings, which were also open to developers to attend, and members could ask questions. There would be lots of opportunity at an early stage. A whole range of things could be done that would then feed into the final application. Issues would be explored at the public meetings and also at the pre-application stage before the application came to the planning committees.

 

Councillor G Shiell asked how you would determine where you started the masterplanning process first.

 

The Interim Assistant Director replied that this was determined by how interested the developer was on moving the development proposal forward. The Planning Policy team was working out a proposed timeline. On some of these proposals that had already been identified, the developers had advised that they would not be initiating their projects until towards the end of the Local Plan process. Furthermore, if a collection of sites was to cross another authority’s boundary then this would be viewed as a masterplan.

 

Councillor M Sartin asked about the opportunity of input from the local community.

 

The Interim Assistant Director explained that the difference here was that the Council was organising this not the developers, who might arrange their own presentations.

 

Councillor C C Pond asked what role the parish/town councils would have in the process, to which the reply was that this could take place through the Local Councils Liaison Committee, and at the next meeting.

 

Councillor J H Whitehouse asked about additional sites that might be identified.

 

The Interim Assistant Director said the Council had been through an extensive site selection process to identify sites and there was a new process system. There might be new sites, but these would not be part of the LP as they were not suitable.

 

A number of issues presented themselves, as detailed:

 

•      What level of member involvement in masterplans should there be?

•      Community engagement/involvement – should proposals set up a Development Management Forum or mechanism for public engagement?

•      Which applications should be determined by officers?

•      How deal with the master planning issues?

•      Where would infrastructure applications go? DDMC?

•      Should all larger sites go to DDMC? What should be the threshold for this?

•      Should sites go only if requesting more homes than the Local Plan allocation suggests?

•      Should area subcommittees have a role similar to those owned by EFDC
eg referring them to DDMC if proposing refusal contrary to officer recommendations?

•      What other safeguards should there be?

 

The Interim Assistant Director would advise councillors further on these issues through the Members Bulletin.

 

The Assistant Director of Governance advised members that as they had reached ‘Committee systems for members considering planning applications’ (point (17) onwards) in the Planning Process Review 2017/18 report, this would be a good point to start from at the next meeting, which was agreed.

 

            Agreed:

 

(1)    The Assistant Director of Governance to draft up revised delegations and bring back to a future meeting.

 

(2)    The Interim Assistant Director to advise councillors further on any issues through the Members Bulletin; and

 

(3)    Planning Process Review 2017/18 report, (17) Committee systems for members considering planning applications – next meeting to commence from this point.