Issue - meetings

The report of the Executive Manager – Communities is attached.

The Service Manager – Communities, Planning and Growth delivered a presentation on Planning Enforcement, which accompanied the report already circulated with the agenda.

In the presentation, the Service Manager – Communities, Planning and Growth and N Cox, Principal Planning Officer provided details on the following issues:

·         the Council’s Corporate Enforcement Policy, which had been adopted in March 2010 and last revised in June 2017;

·         what constituted a breach of planning control and the range of ways to tackle them;

·         timescales involved for taking enforcement action;

·         the various enforcement tools available to the Council;

·         the appeals process against the serving of an Enforcement Notice;

·         the different enforcement tools available to the Council;

·         categories of enforcement enquiries received by the Council from 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020;

·         the outcome of investigations in 2019/20;

·         the number of notices served by regional councils since 2014;

·         the team structure;

·         the number of planning submissions received from 2010 to 2020; and

·         various case studies.

At the invitation of the Group, Councillors had been asked to submit written submissions on their experiences of planning enforcement.  The Group had received submissions from a number of Councillors and those had been considered by the Executive Manager for Communities and the Service Manager – Communities, Planning and Growth.  The report and presentation had provided responses to some of the questions raised by the Councillors, and a Question and Answer document would be produced following the meeting to address any remaining issues and points raised during the meeting.

Following the last Council meeting, the Chairman of the Growth and Development Scrutiny Group had invited Councillor Jones to attend this meeting to provide his thoughts on the Council’s planning enforcement process.

Councillor Jones stated that following a conversation with Planning Officers earlier this year, he had become concerned that current staffing levels were insufficient to cope with the volume of work, especially given the growth in the number of applications and the scale and complexity of large developments.  He was aware of instances where specific environmental protection measures had not been undertaken by developers as specified as part of the planning permission.  There needed to be more emphasis on proactively ensuring that work was being undertaken and conditions were being complied with.

The Service Manager – Communities, Planning and Growth advised that there was no definitive definition of what constituted ‘harm’, it was subjective and a matter of scale and degree.

Councillor Thomas reiterated the comments made by Councillor Jones and queried if developers were notifying officers when trigger points where met, which required work to be undertaken.  That was particularly important when developments where passed over to management companies and residents, who might be charged if works were not completed.  Although the proactive monitoring of developments over 50 dwellings was welcomed, it would be helpful if that 50 dwellings limit could be reduced.

The Service Manager – Communities, Planning and Growth confirmed that with the exception of two sites, all of the new larger developments coming forward where  ...  view the full minutes text for item 20