Issue - meetings

To update members on the progress of current planning appeals.

Members were updated on progress of current planning appeals. The chairman reminded members that these updates had originally been requested due to the number of appeals being lost following member decisions against officer recommendations and asked whether this was still the cause of lost appeals. In response, it was noted that the majority of cases in the report were linked to officer decisions but that this may be representative of the increase in delegated decisions being made. A member suggested that the introduction of the option for a “minded to refuse” decision to allow for consideration of reasons for refusal had also led to improved decision making, although some members were not comfortable with the “minded to refuse” process.

A member drew attention to the financial implications and queried whether the budget would be sufficient to cover any further appeals. In response it was explained that a recent appeal had taken more days than anticipated which had resulted in higher costs, but that there was unlikely to be a similar occurrence throughout the rest of the year. Furthermore, the Council was awaiting confirmation of costs which it expected to be recovering from a recent appeal.

Reference was made to recent discussions on the need to include more information in the Planning Committee minutes on members’ reasons for refusal. Members welcomed the introduction of a crib sheet to assist them and requested regular inclusion of policy references in the agenda and more frequent training on planning policy. It was requested that the part of the constitution relating to provision for a member to call an application into Planning Committee be recirculated for members and that some guidance be produced to assist members who have an issue with an application, for example by way of a flow chart.

RESOLVED –

(i)            The report be noted;

(ii)           The following be provided for members:

·         A crib sheet to assist with reasons for refusal

·         Planning policy guidance be included in agendas regularly

·         An extract from the constitution in relation to calling a planning application to the committee

·         A flowchart to assist where a member has an issue with an application

·         Further planning policy training.