Agenda item

The Committee is invited to recommend to Council that changes be incorporated into the Constitution relating to the Head of Regulatory Services.

The Committee was informed that following a review, the Head of Regulatory Services had identified two areas of operational activity-– 7 day list of objections received and enforcement - which would benefit materially from changes to delegated powers to enable more effective and efficient service delivery.

            The current position was that Sections 3.6.6(d) and (e) of the Constitution covered planning applications which were intended for an officer approval under delegated powers but which had attracted objection(s) by the public.  In such cases the application was included within what was known as the "7 day list". This was included within the weekly Calendar Brief.  The specific purpose of the list was to notify Members about planning applications which had attracted at least one objection and which they might wish to consider calling in to be decided by the Regulatory Services Committee rather than under staff delegated powers.

It was proposed to retain the call-in process itself but to dispense with creation of the '7 day list' and its weekly publication within Calendar Brief as the result of a survey of all Members undertaken on 31 October 2014 which asked a series of questions concerning their perceived usefulness of the 7 Day List.  The answers indicated that the majority of those Members who responded bore out officers’ conclusions that there was no material benefit in retaining the 7 day list within the Call-in procedure.

Members were then informed that a similar situation existed with respect of planning enforcement notices which was specifically about the service of notices against breaches of planning control.

Members were reminded that the current position was that the limited range of prevailing delegated powers for enforcement meant that many straightforward cases, where a planning permission had not already been refused for that development, needed Regulatory Services Committee’s authority.

A review of enforcement authority reports presented to Regulatory Services over the period January 2013 to date showed that in no instances did the Committee decline to authorise staff to initiate enforcement action and so extending delegated powers to cover all types of enforcement case would speed up the timeframe within which notices might be created and served and this would result in a reduction in reports to Committee which would create process efficiencies.

A Member raised a query about “stopping-up” orders and the Head of Regulatory Services explained that there was a difference between “Stop” notices and “stopping up” orders and that the amendment did not involve the latter in any way. 

The Committee recommended to Council that the following changes be incorporated into Section 3.6.6 of the Constitution relating to the Head of Regulatory Services.

1)         Section 3.6.6(e) be deleted and Section 3.6.6 (d) be altered to:

            "Members may request that an application be referred to the Regulatory Services Committee for determination.  Such request must be made in writing to either the Head of Regulatory Services or the Planning Manager personally.  If no such request is received by the deadline of that period the Head of Regulatory Services may approve the application.

2)         Section 3.6.6(p) be altered to:

            "To issue Enforcement Notices, Stop Notices and Listed Building Enforcement Notices".