Planning decisions at area committees

Richard Taylor in the comments has asked me to post my reasons for not voting on planning applications at Area Committees, so this seems like a good opportunity.

Firstly, some history. Around 2003/4, the Liberal Democrats running the City Council setup Area Committees, ostensibly to bring decision making closer to local communities, and encourage community involvement. As part of setting up these committees, they decided that planning applications significant enough to be decided by Councillors rather than Council officers, but not having City wide significance were to be decided at these committees.

It is difficult to come up with a good argument that says the area committees are a sensible use of Council resources. It is rare that more than about 15 members of the public turn up at East Area Committee, frequently outnumbered by Councillors, Council staff and others on the public payroll – the extra costs (staff etc) of running these committees in 2004 were estimated to be £100,000 per annum (Scribbles on back of envelope, 4 committees, 6 meetings per year, generously 30 members of the public in each, average cost per meeting per member of the public engaged - £138 – can you see why I am outraged at the costs?) Whilst much of the debate at these meetings is useful, many of the members of the public present are already very empowered to communicate with their local Councillors (resident association officers, local Council candidates from various political parties etc), and rather than empowering more people, it is possible that these meetings actually further relegate the views of those not currently engaged in local decision making process – i.e. the literally 99.9% of the population of East area that chose not to turn up to these meetings.

But deciding planning applications at these meetings isn’t just a waste of money, it is actively damaging the quality of planning decisions made by the Council for the following reasons:

• Regardless of training offered, the average experience of planning law and policies amongst members of area committees is significantly below that of the main planning committee, and indeed shortly after the local elections, Councillors on area committees were asked to make what are quasi-legal decisions with no training or experience at all.
• All Councillors on the main planning committee should have an active interest in planning, as opposed to Councillors who may be more interested in other aspects of the Council’s work.
• Decisions made after 10pm at night by people who will likely have been working all day cannot be as well considered as those made at a more sensible time.
• During the working day at the Guildhall, the full planning committee can call on expert officers where necessary, e.g. tree experts etc to help clarifying points before making decisions.
• The main planning committee meetings monthly, Area committees every 8 weeks, frequently making it hard for Area committee decisions to be made within the target timescales, costing the Council money and risking immediate appeals for non-determination as happened with Mill Road Tescos.

All good reasons why making planning decisions at area committees is a disaster. But for me there is an overwhelming reason why I refuse to take part. The current planning system does not permit those deciding to ‘pre-determine’ applications – they must keep an open mind until the meeting when the decision is made, and those who, in the jargon, have ‘fettered their discretion’ cannot then take part in the decision.

And it is this aspect of the situation which means I refuse to take part in planning application decisions, so that when local residents contact me, I am free to let them know my opinion on an application, and offer my full help to oppose or support an application if applicable. Yes, I could just refuse to take part in those applications for which this scenario happens, but I wouldn’t want my constituents (or indeed anyone in the City) to be reluctant to contact me about a planning matter, knowing that by default I couldn’t even let them know what I thought about the application.

This issue got heated at the time of the Mill Road Tesco refrigeration application – with letters to the paper criticising those, like myself, who refused to vote on the application (even though I did speak at the meeting to raise my concerns). I think the concerns were more that Councillors hadn’t put aside all other considerations and voted to oppose Tesco, but it didn’t stop the Lib Dems passing a shabby motion at full Council trying to bully all members of the Council into supporting their policy on planning decisions at area committees.

I was elected this year on the following manifesto pledge:

“Conservatives will scrap the area committee system. The fiasco of the Tesco application on Mill Road showed how the planning system is in chaos, and how the area committees are incapable of taking decisions. This is an experiment that has failed. We will look at how resident’s participation can be made more effective and move to timely meetings of a full planning committee.”

I will continue to campaign for a change to the Council’s deeply misguided current policy, and in order to best represent my constituents interests, I will refuse to take part in Area Committee planning decisions.