Agenda item

To consider a report of the Head of Planning.

This item was item 7 of the agenda and was moved to item 8.

At the invitation of the Chair, Councillor Arlett spoke to the committee, expressing support for the planning committee and officers. He suggested that the report could have focussed more on the positives and that councillors and officers should communicate more as well as having additional training to improve outcomes.  He said that overall, the work of the planning team and planning committee was very good, and that committee were not obliged to agree with officer recommendations.

This item was introduced by Cabinet member Anne-Marie Simpson and supporting officers present were Paula Fox, Adrian Duffield and Tracy Smith.

In summary, committee members felt that the performance overall was good, especially considering the changes to working that occurred during the pandemic. Members discussed the metrics the council’s planning decisions were measured against (quality of decision making) and whether they were fair, although the committee was reminded that the authority had to follow the metrics from central government (Planning Inspectorate).

The committee discussed benchmarking and how to compare with other high land price areas / districts. The report had links to live tables and the data was available for comparison. High land price tended to incentivise appeals if the application was not granted.

The committee discussed the difference in success between major and minor planning applications and asked whether it was possible to quantify the difference and explain this to the Planning Inspectorate. It was noted that there tended to be more senior legal representation for major application appeal hearings, but officers explained that this was not in the council’s control.

The committee noted that a report will come to it in future which will give further information on appeals process, staffing, approach and strategy.

The committee agreed that there needed to be further training, and it was suggested that focus should be on analysing ‘lessons learned’ from appeals in order to better inform training for councillors and officers. Parish councils were also mentioned for training needs. A view was expressed that it was important to not be over cautious in making decisions because of the metrics we were measured against.

A motion to note the report was seconded and the committee voted in favour.

Resolved:

Committee noted the report and provided comments to the Cabinet member.