Agenda item

Planning permission was refused for applications Y/103/18/PL and EP/148/20/PL. Both decisions were taken by the Development Control Committee (DCC) and were contrary to the advice of officers. In deciding the subsequent appeals, the Inspector has concluded that the Council acted unreasonably in refusing planning permission and has awarded costs against the Council.

This award follows an award of costs for BE/69/19/OUT in May 2020 (a decision also taken at Development Control contrary to the officer recommendation). This award of costs (£11,400) was paid out of the Department’s budget. A Supplementary Estimate is now sought to pay these further costs as the Department budget is unable to accommodate these significant additional payments.

The Cabinet

            RECOMMEND TO FULL COUNCIL

            To approve a supplementary estimate of a maximum of £33,000 to settle the awards of costs in respect of applications Y/103/18/PL and EP/148/20/PL.  This equates to a band D equivalent Council Tax of £0.53.

The Cabinet Member for Planning, Councillor Lury, introduced this report explaining that a supplementary estimate was required to a maximum sum of £30,000 to settle the costs claimed against the Council as a result of two recent unsuccessful appeals. Councillor Lury urged Councillors to take note of the Planning Inspector’s reasoning in awarding these costs in that the Council had previously been advised that it needed to be more risk adverse especially when objecting to an application on highways grounds, although he fully understood the frustration felt by Councillors in this regard.  Councillor Lury explained that the two planning applications were Y/103/18/PL and EP/148/20/PL and he referred to the appendices that had been attached to the report containing the reasoning of the inspector regarding these two applications.

Much discussion took place in relation to this report.  Councillor Stanley confirmed that this was a difficult situation and he stated that he did not envy those Councillors who sat on the Development Control Committee in terms of the number of different issues that they had to balance in determining applications.  He agreed with the comments that had been made by Councillor Lury in that the Council needed to be more risk adverse with its decision making.  He was of the view that the Committee had taken this viewpoint on board and had improved in discussing and communicating views where they could make a difference. 

Other Cabinet Members agreed with the statements made and therefore highlighted the need for a Members’ Seminar to be arranged so that collective discussion between Members and Officers could take place and the issues raised by the recent Planning Review report considered and a way forward confirmed.

Conflicting views were then raised by non-Cabinet Councillors who felt that Development Control Councillors should not base decision making solely in reaction to public representation. The Cabinet Member for Planning responded outlining that all decisions made by the Development Control Committee had been cross party and refusals had been based on genuine highway safety concerns, difficulties had arisen as the Highways Authority had opposing views, this was very relevant to these two planning applications.

 Other points made were that decisions had been based on new standards for parking which had just been confirmed by the Planning Policy Team yet but this appeared to be in conflict with what the Planning Inspector had thought the Council should be doing and so there were Councillors who had difficult in accepting the Inspector’s decision on the appeals.  

A further request was made for Member Planning training to resume and the need for the Council to engage better and more effectively with the Planning Advisory Groups.

          The Cabinet

                        RECOMMEND TO FULL COUNCIL

That a supplementary estimate of a maximum of £33,000 be approved to settle the award of costs in respect of applications Y/103/18/PL and EP/148/20/PL.  This equates to a Band D Council Tax equivalent of £0.53.

The Cabinet confirmed its decision as per Decision Notice C/046/11012021, a copy of which is attached to the signed copy of the Minutes.