Agenda item

The Portfolio Holder advised that the cross-party workshops held with officers and an external facilitator had been extremely useful and had been one of the best he had participated in and a healthy debate had taken place on a number of issues and a great deal had been achieved.  He noted that SSDC was now 6 out of 21 authorities in terms of speed and 90% of applications had been determined within time over the last 24 months.  .

In response to questions from Members, the Lead Specialist for Built Environment and the Director for Service Delivery advised:-

·         Every planning application impacted by phosphates had a specific review by Natural England which was a resource issue. Until the Council had a standard position then all of the variables were being checked on applications which was doubling the workload in some cases and until SSDC had credit releases Natural England would have to audit the appraisal.

·         There had been around a 22% increase in householder applications and approximately 300 held up due to phosphates. 

·         It was hoped to provide a solution to the phosphate issue with En Trade.

·         Point 9 of the report included agreed extensions of time.

·         Part of the improvement package was to prioritise planning enforcement and good progress had been made as the number of cases had reduced from 500 to 360.

·         21 days was the standard deadline for consultation responses but officers would accept comments up to when their report was written.

·         The service had relied on using Locality Officers to conduct site visits but recently they were employing more geographically local officers to conduct their own site visits.

·         Planning enforcement action was now being prioritised and there were 16 active cases being progressed to court action.

The Portfolio Holder noted that the Lead Specialist for Built Environment had provided an excellent update at Area South Committee the previous day and some issues relating to the phosphates issue were beyond the Council’s control.

The Director for Service Delivery and the Portfolio Holder for Area South thanked both officers and Members who had taken part in the Planning Reimagined workshops.

The Chairman of the Scrutiny Committee said that planning was an emotive issue which was time-bound.  The Scrutiny Committee had felt the cross-party group to review the service was very good.  They had raised questions regarding extensions of time to applications, undertaking site-visits during Covid, and did SSDC have a landscape officer?  They also felt it would have been useful to have a paper on the phosphate issue presented at the same time.  Mention was also made to improve communication with town & parish councils and officers providing planning enforcement action.

At the conclusion of the debate, the Portfolio thanked officers for the work they had achieved and asked that the report be noted.