Agenda item

To agree to delegate to the Head of Development Services, in consultation with the Lead and Ward Members, authorisation to make the formal decision on taking the Gotherington Neighbourhood Plan to Referendum following receipt of the Examiner’s Report

That the modifications made to the Gotherington Neighbourhood Development Plan be APPROVED and it be formally AGREED that the Plan be progressed to Community Referendum, ascribed by Regulation 18 of the Neighbourhood Planning (General) Regulations 2012 (as amended).  

96.1           The report of the Planning Policy Officer, circulated at Pages No. 151-183, sought approval for the Gotherington Neighbourhood Plan to proceed to a community referendum.

96.2           Members were advised that, since the publication of the report before the Committee, an email had been received from Gotherington Parish Council which confirmed that it fully supported the amendments made to its Plan by the independent examiner and asked that the Plan was submitted for a referendum. The report had been written on the basis that this information had not been received from the Parish Council and, as such, the recommendation was that authority be delegated to the Head of Development Services, in consultation with the Lead and Ward Members, to approve the modifications made by the independent examiner and make the formal decision to progress the Plan to a community referendum. The recommendation within the report could now be amended as it would be possible for the Executive Committee to approve the amended Plan going to a community referendum; given the Parish Council had confirmed it was happy with it as amended.

96.3           The Head of Development Services explained that the Council had a duty to advise and assist communities in the development of their Neighbourhood Plans and the Gotherington Neighbourhood Development Plan was the third one within the Borough to get to the referendum stage. The Plan had been through the necessary consultation period as well as an independent examination, the report of which was attached as an appendix to the Committee report. The date of the referendum was likely to be 20 July which meant there was a tight timescale to get all of the necessary information in place to meet that deadline.

96.4           In response to a query regarding the examination process, the Head of Development Services explained that the independent examiners all worked under the same guidelines but they had different balanced views. This meant that, whilst the variations in comments on Plans should not be too dramatic, there would undoubtedly be differences. The Regulations had changed in February and there was now less scope for potential changes but a few more decisions would need to be published before it would be clear what effect those changes would have and the approach that examiners were taking. The parishes did not have to accept the changes proposed by the independent examiner and the advice provided to them from officers was given in good faith and should be consistent in terms of the need to take account of the Joint Core Strategy and the Borough Plan.

96.5           A Member questioned whether it would be possible to set up a process whereby referendums were held at particular points in the year rather than on an ad-hoc basis; she felt this would help Democratic Services in terms of planning its workload. In response, the Borough Solicitor indicated that some authorities had tried to do that initially but the difficulty was that the local planning authority only had a certain timescale within which the referendum had to be held once the independent examination had taken place; this made it hard to plan the dates of the referendum in advance. In response to a suggestion that Neighbourhood Development Plans could be discussed at a future Parish and Town Council seminar, the Head of Development Services advised that a process-based presentation had been provided fairly recently but she felt that more could be done in terms of explaining the role and purpose of Neighbourhood Plans; she undertook to investigate how that information could more effectively be disseminated to communities.

96.6           Accordingly, it was