Agenda item

Purpose: To formulate the Councils’ response to the Planning White Paper published in August 2020 which is currently out for consultation and which closes on the 28th October 2020.

The Council considered a report (Agenda Item 15) which formulated the Councils’ response to the Planning White Paper published in August 2020 which was currently out for consultation which would close on the 28^th October 2020.

MOTION: Proposed by Councillor Hilary Cole and seconded by Councillor Tony Vickers:

That the Council:

“formally responds to the consultation questions as set out in appendix 1 subject to the inclusion of the amendments circulated under separate cover and that authority be delegated to the Head of Planning and Development in consultation with the Portfolio Holder for Planning and the Shadow Portfolio Holders for Planning to amend any typographical errors and make any additional minor amendments needed prior to submission.”

Councillor Hilary Cole thanked all those Members that had attended the briefings and provided comments directly to Officers on the consultation. She also wished to thank members of the Planning Advisory Group (PAG) who had held a frank discussion in formulating the Council’s response where wide consensus was reached. She also wished to convey her thanks to Officers for all the work they had put into compiling the response.

Councillor Cole commented that the White Paper proposed a radical reshaping of planning and represented the biggest change to the planning system since the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act was introduced. She commented that not all the proposals were bad as some of the proposals would help to expedite the process. She felt however that speed and certainty should not be at the cost of democracy and quality and should not be to the detriment of future generations. She also did not feel that it was appropriate that residents would have to meet the costs of providing up front infrastructure which should be funded by the developers in the first place.

She noted that the South East Strategic Leaders Group, which the Council was a member of, and the Local Government Association would also be providing responses to the consultation. The Council was therefore also working collaboratively to respond to the consultation.

Some minor amendments, which had been circulated under separate cover, had been agreed at the last PAG meeting and those would be included in the Council’s response.

Councillor Alan Macro stated that he was in broad agreement with the proposals put forward. He noted that at PAG there had been some disagreement over what the Government termed renewal or growth zones and protected zones where it was proposed that automatic planning permission would be granted. While he could see the merits of doing so in growth areas provided that master plans were in place there would however be a great deal of expenditure on these plans by the local authority who would simultaneously also be deprived of income from planning applications. He was very concerned about the automatic permissions associated with renewal zones and protected zones. 

Councillor James Cole supported the Council’s proposed balanced response. There were some issues with the existing planning regime that he believed needed to be changed and modernised. He was concerned that the changes would not impose a duty on developers to build out their permissions. He was also concerned that the proposals would to some degree centralise this function and would not adequately take cognisance of local initiatives such as the Neighbourhood Development Plans. He thanked Bryan Lyttle and his team for the approach they were taking and for their efforts in preparing the response. The Chairman echoed this thanks to Officers.

Councillor Alan Law stated that he agreed that Officers had done an excellent job in preparing a response and he was generally supportive of the approach propsed. He stated that the fundamental flaw with the proposal was that it was difficult to draft national policies that covered rural, metropolitan and urban areas. He did  however agree that local plans did need stream lining. He supported the idea of development zones but stated that the devil would be in the detail as to how they would be implemented. He lamented that there was not a general countryside zone which was needed to make all of it work.  He was not supportive of central government dictating the local housing numbers.

Councillor Adrian Abbs also passed on his thanks to Officers but stated that unfortunately he was not able to support the proposed response. The felt that the additional amendments set out on the addendum to the agenda weakened the Council’s response. He would have preferred to stick to the original responses.

Councillor Tony Linden was concerned about the long term approved sites that were not being developed and were being land banked. He would prefer to see permissions being lapsed where development was not commenced.

Councillor Tony Vickers was happy to second the motion. The reason for the change from ‘no’ to ‘not sure’ was to reflect that much of the detail was not yet available. He supported stream lining the process, making best use of digital technology, focussing on better design, sustainability and beauty, improving infrastructure delivery and ensuring that communities could engage and support the process. There were  some issues that did concern  him. The first was the notion that the planning system had failed which had resulted in a failure to deliver the number of houses needed, there was no evidence to support this in the paper. He believed that this was a result of land market failure which needed to be addressed. He was also concerned  that the planning system was also not being properly funded.

Councillor Hilary Cole thanked Members for their cross party support and work on this issue.

The Motion was put to the meeting and duly RESOLVED.