Issue - meetings

(Councillors Coster and Blanchard-Cooper redeclared their Personal Interests made at the start of the meeting. Councillor Tilbrook redeclared his Prejudicial Interest and was removed from the meeting for the duration of the item.)

The Principal Planning Officer presented her report with updates. Members then took part in a full debate on the application where a number of points were raised.

The principal concern among Members was the location of the proposed additional beach huts, particularly those at the bottom of Norfolk Road, and whether the additional huts would block the current gaps between the existing huts too much. It was raised that the huts would be less attractive to tourists than the sea views they would potentially be limiting and the infrequency of their use would be denying more people a visual aspect of the beach. The Cabinet Member for Commercial and Business Development confirmed that other locations had been looked at and had been ruled out.

Concerns were also raised about accessibility for wheelchair users and others for whom entry to the huts via the shingle beach would create difficulties and whether slight differences in colour between the old and new huts would have a detrimental impact on the view.

Though Members appreciated the commercial and economic benefits of having more beach huts and acknowledged that there was demand for more huts to be available, these were not considerations for this committee which was solely purposed to find on material planning considerations. Members spoke of their disappointment with the process of this planning application, whether it was being treated differently because it was a Council application, the need for more information to inform final decisions and whether the principles of the application should have been dealt with in committee before coming to the Development Control Committee.

The Principal Planning Officer and Group Head of Planning provided members with responses to all points raised during the debate.

Councillor Bower put forward a proposal for deferral until the application had been considered by the appropriate service committee for the developer side of matters, which was seconded by Councillor Pendleton. This was subsequently withdrawn and discussion moved to refusal of the application upon which the original recommendation was put to the vote and LOST and therefore,

The Committee

               RESOLVED

That the application be REFUSED given the number and position of the proposed beach huts and the lack of accessibility detail, the development would adversely affect the visual amenities of the locality in conflict with policies D DM1,  DSP1 and LAN DM1 of the Arun Local Plan and policy SCP-1 of the South Inshore and Offshore Marine Plan.