Issue - meetings

Members raised the following points on the report, CP33 what steps were being taken to improve this indicator, it was explained that one application, Land North of the Academy in Littlehampton had been with the council a long time due to ongoing work with S106 agreements for affordable housing. The Group Head of Planning explained that any application that was received by the council with a s106 agreement attached to it, would not be completed within the 13-week timeframe due to the level of work involved with these specifically. A further question was raised regarding why the target was showing as significantly worse in quarter 2 and would considering a change to the process for applications with s106’s attached help improve this. It was confirmed that the second appendix to the report, detailed ‘rolling’ figures and that these needed to be considered over a 6-month timeframe to truly see if there were trends due to specific variations. In addressing the process change suggested it was stated that there had been a number of applications that had been deferred previously and more recently in order to wait for s106 agreement to be received and reviewed prior to any determination being made. However, the last thing that anyone wants as an outcome would be abortive work being completed, if officers spent months working on the s106 agreement and the application was then refused, the work and time put into this has been wasted.

The recommendations were proposed by Councillor McDougall and seconded by Councillor Wallsgrove.

          The Committee

                     RESOLVED

2.1. It is recommended that the Committee notes the contents of this report and provides any questions or comments on the indicators relevant to this Committee to the Policy and Finance Committee on 8 February 2024.