Agenda item

Report of the Overview & Scrutiny Committee

The Chair of the Overview & Scrutiny Committee presented a report and recommendations of the Planning Informal Task Group that had been established to review service delivery of the Council’s planning functions. In introducing the report Councillor Austen-Baker advised the meeting that the report needed to be read in conjunction with the LGA Planning Peer Review report.

 

Cabinet was requested to consider the recommendations of the Overview & Scrutiny Committee.

 

The options, options analysis, including risk assessment and officer preferred option, were set out in the report as follows:

 

 

The recommendations of Overview & Scrutiny were as follows:

 

(1)        More (and more regular) training for members of Planning Regulatory Committee, including both planning law and on the respective roles of officers and members.

 

(2)        More guidance for residents wishing to speak at Committee meetings, in order to make the best of the available time, and more guidance for residents wishing to make written submissions.

 

(3)        That Council Business Committee, in the new municipal year, be requested to seek the views of the new Chair of the Planning Regulatory Committee as to the most suitable location for meetings of that Committee.

 

(4)        There should be no change to the system of calling-in applications: the suggestion that there are too many is not supported by evidence from members.

 

(5)        No substantial change to the scheme of delegation, but if a way could be found to streamline decisions in cases where the application is only coming to committee because of a connexion between the applicant and a council officer, this might be helpful.

 

(6)        Presentations by officers at Committee should be made shorter. Members can be expected to read the papers beforehand, so the presenting officer only needs to make a brief introduction, draw attention to any particular ‘highlights’ and then answer questions from members.

 

(7)        Officers should be encouraged to avoid advocacy of their recommendations. Non-delegated decisions are made by the Committee and officer recommendations are just that: professional recommendations. The role of officers is to advise the Committee, not push a particular view. If the Committee refuses permission where officers had recommended approval, then officers should be prepared to assist the Council in arguing its own planning grounds for refusal against the applicant’s position in the event of an appeal to the extent that this can be done within the rules and codes of conduct of the Royal Town Planning Institute, or other relevant professional body.

 

(8)        When officers are determining matters of detail after the granting of outline planning permission, they should work co-operatively and proactively with applicants to settle details. The current practice of rejecting detailed plans in relation to specific points, e.g., positioning of the building within the site, and then leaving it to the applicant to come up with new plans, which might also be rejected is wasteful of the time and other resources both of applicants and officers. Officers should be prepared to state what would be acceptable to them, to enable applicants to submit or revise detailed plans accordingly.

 

(9)        It should be easier for applicants to secure a site visit by an officer – for a reasonable fee (if permitted by law).

 

(10)     With consistency being vital to public confidence in the planning system, the Task Group strongly urges that there should be constant review of the question of how to secure maximum consistency of approach amongst officers.

 

(11)     Pre-application advice should follow the application throughout the process, so that officers determining or making recommendations on an application will be aware of what advice was given to the applicant and seek to avoid taking views contrary to the advice where the applicant has adopted the advice given at pre-application stage.

 

(12)     Effective and prompt enforcement is vital to public confidence, and failure in this area might result in negative ombudsman findings as well as general reputational damage. Accordingly, it is recommended that the Council should lift the freeze on recruitment in respect of the post in enforcement left vacant by the appointee pulling out. It would also be helpful if elected members could receive periodic briefings as to priorities and application of the enforcement process, to enable them to deal most effectively with residents’ queries.

 

The Chair of the Overview & Scrutiny Committee responded to questions on the report.

 

As Cabinet Member with Special Responsibility Councillor Dowding referred to the recent Planning Peer Review and thanked Councillor Austen-Baker, as the Chair of Overview and Scrutiny and the Informal Task Group for the report which added gloss to some of the recommendations of the Peer Review.

 

Councillor Dowding proposed, seconded by Councillor Wood:-

 

“That recommendations 1 to 6 be accepted, recommendation 7 be rejected; the contents of recommendations 8, 9 & 10 be noted but rejected; recommendation 11 be accepted and recommendation 12 be noted”.

 

Councillors then voted:-

 

Resolved unanimously:

 

(1)             That the following recommendations of the Planning Informal Task Group be accepted.

 

·        More (and more regular) training for members of Planning Regulatory Committee, including both planning law and on the respective roles of officers and members. (Recommendation 1 as set out in the report)

·        More guidance for residents wishing to speak at Committee meetings, in order to make the best of the available time, and more guidance for residents wishing to make written submissions. (Recommendation 2 as set out in the report)

·        That Council Business Committee, in the new municipal year, be requested to seek the views of the new Chair of the Planning Regulatory Committee as to the most suitable location for meetings of that Committee. (Recommendation 3 as set out in the report)

·        There should be no change to the system of calling-in applications: the suggestion that there are too many is not supported by evidence from members. (Recommendation 4 as set out in the report)

·        No substantial change to the scheme of delegation, but if a way could be found to streamline decisions in cases where the application is only coming to committee because of a connexion between the applicant and a council officer, this might be helpful. (Recommendation 5 as set out in the report)

·        Presentations by officers at Committee should be made shorter. Members can be expected to read the papers beforehand, so the presenting officer only needs to make a brief introduction, draw attention to any particular ‘highlights’ and then answer questions from members. (Recommendation 6 at set out in the report)

·        Pre-application advice should follow the application throughout the process, so that officers determining or making recommendations on an application will be aware of what advice was given to the applicant and seek to avoid taking views contrary to the advice where the applicant has adopted the advice given at pre-application stage. (Recommendation 11 as set out in the report)

 

(2)             That recommendation 7 of the Planning Informal Task Group, as set out in the report, be rejected.

(3)             That the contents of recommendations 8, 9, 10 & 11 of the Planning Informal Task Group be noted but rejected.

(4)             That recommendation 12 of the Planning Informal Task Group, as set out in the report, be noted.

 

Officer responsible for effecting the decision:

 

Chief Officer – Planning and Climate Change

 

Reasons for making the decision

 

It is important that Overview & Scrutiny acts as a critical friend for Cabinet.

The report contributes to the Council’s priorities.

 

The recommendations of the task group that were not approved were rejected for the following reasons:

 

Recommendation 7 was rejected as currently worded.  It was recognised that officers should not push their views however officers were there to advise and warn members if a prospective decision appeared indefensible.

 

Recommendations 8, 9 & 10 were noted but rejected as the planning department already works with developers on matters of detail (recommendation 8), recommendation 9 was already in place with the launch of the pre-app advice system, and consistency referred to in recommendation 10 was already part of the decision checking system whereby Managers review draft planning application decisions.

 

Recommendation 12 was noted as effective and prompt enforcement was vital to public confidence.  In terms of a recruitment freeze it was noted that there was no current ‘freeze’ on posts; all job vacancies proposed for recruitment are considered by Senior Leadership Team. Vacancies were closely reviewed and those imperative to the continuation of services were recruited to; the difficulty was actually being able to recruit to those positions, particularly for senior roles.