To approve the Council’s response to the consultation, as set out in Appendix 1 to the report, for submission to the Department of Communities and Local Government.

That the response to the consultation, as set out in Appendix 1 to the report, be APPROVED for submission to the Department of Communities and Local Government.

99.1           The report of the Development Services Group Manager, circulated at Pages No. 183-280, set out the government’s technical consultation on the implementation of planning changes that were contained within the Housing and Planning Bill. Members were asked to approve the proposed response to that consultation for submission to the Department for Communities and Local Government. 

99.2           Members were advised that the Department for Communities and Local Government was consulting on views on the proposed approach to implementing the planning provisions in the Housing and Planning Bill along with some other planning measures. The proposals contained several changes to the way planning was delivered which, if adopted in their current form, could fundamentally change the way the planning service within local government was provided. It was therefore important that the Council responded to the consultation at this stage.

99.3           Particular attention was drawn to Paragraph 2.2 of the report, which set out some of the main proposals, and to Appendix 1, which detailed the responses to each area. In summary the proposals included: adjusting planning fees in line with inflation, but only in areas where the local planning authority was performing well; the introduction of a new ‘permission in principle’ route for obtaining planning permission which was designed to separate decision-making on ‘in principle’ issues from matters of technical detail; the introduction of a brownfield register which would become a qualifying document to grant permission in principle – authorities would be expected to take a positive, proactive approach when including sites in their registers, rejecting potential sites only if they could demonstrate that there was no realistic prospect of sites being suitable for new housing; the requirement to publish a small sites register and subsequently for Councils to permit sufficient serviced land to match demand; proposals to set the various time periods for local planning authority decisions on neighbourhood planning, to set the procedure to be followed where the Secretary of State chose to intervene in sending a plan or Order to a referendum and to introduce a new way for neighbourhood forums to better engage in local planning; to prioritise intervention in local plans where the least progress had been made, where there was under-delivery of housing in areas of high housing pressure, where policies in plans had not been kept up to date, where there was higher housing pressure and where intervention would have the greatest impact in accelerating local plan production; extending the approach to planning performance to include applications for non-major development to ensure all applicants could have certainty in the level of service to be provided; to introduce powers to enable the testing of competition in the processing of planning applications; to place a duty on the local planning authority to ensure that planning reports recorded details of financial benefits that were likely to accrue to an area as a result of proposed development; the introduction of a dispute resolution mechanism for Section 106 Agreements; and ensuring there was sufficient provision to meet growing school places.

99.4           During the discussion which ensued, one Member was disappointed that the consultation had not been viewed more positively. He felt that it was designed to allow the provision of more housing in a timely manner and he was of the view that this should be supported wherever possible. In response, the Development Services Group Manager indicated that no one wanted to slow down the process but there were a number of quite fundamental changes proposed in the Bill without a lot of detail and it was felt that, in a number of instances, the further detail behind the proposals was needed to allow Councils to understand how they would work in practice and how they would be resourced. Other Members agreed that Officers were right to take a cautious approach, particularly to proposals like the introduction of an approved provider that could make a recommendation to Committee that Councillors would have to consider; there was concern about what would happen if the advice from the approved provider was found to be wrong at an appeal and costs were awarded – who would then pay those costs. Another Member indicated that his recollection of a previous discussion on this matter was that the majority of Members present were concerned and suspicious of the proposals being made. Tewkesbury Borough Council had worked hard to devise a core strategy that worked and had been frustrated at each step of the way by the planning regime. He felt that the Council should be robust in its response to the consultation in that regard. In terms of the Council’s response, the Development Services Group Manager explained that the consultation was prescribed and, as such, additional comments on other related matters were not permitted. Additional comments could be sent to the Department for Communities and Local Government separately should Members so wish; particularly in respect of the frustrations caused by the slow Joint Core Strategy examination process and the Council’s desire to remove some of the bureaucracy to enable it to speed up the planning process and allow house building to take place at a quicker pace. In addition, it was explained that the Council’s consultation response would also be sent to the Local Government Association which was collating all comments from across the country to ensure that its overall response included the views of all local authorities. 

99.5           Accordingly, it was