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The Cabinet Member for Planning and Coastal Management introduced report ES/0594 which confirmed that the Council had successfully defended four legal challenges during 2020 against planning decisions the Council had made.
The Cabinet Member for Planning and Coastal Management explained that when an application was refused, the applicant had the right of appeal to the Planning Inspector. If planning permission was granted, objectors would not have the right of appeal. There were no third party rights of appeal but if an applicant thought the Council had not followed the necessary procedures, they could consider seeking a Judicial Review. Three of the four recent cases went to full hearings in the High Court. The Council had been successful in defending all four Judicial Reviews but there were costs involved for the Council to employ Counsel as well as the officers’ time. This was all part of the democratic process and scrutiny for the Council. Members were able to read the judges’ reports as appended to the report.
The Head of Planning and Coastal Management advised that it was a team effort defending these challenges, with support from Legal and Environmental Health as well as planning colleagues. In each case, there had been detailed interrogation of the reports, YouTube videos and minutes, each of which had been reviewed with significant detail by the claimants and the Court. It was a credit to the officers and Planning Committees that they had been vindicated in that they enacted the required procedures in the decision making. The Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) provided a forum which had not previously existed to review these decisions. It was important to reflect on some elements of the judgements, as necessary, to put in place any necessary improvements to procedures.
With regard to the Bawdsey Manor case, in his review of the case, the judge noted that the site visit undertaken had enabled the Planning Committee to clearly identify potential impacts of the proposal on the ground and the Planning Authority had been able to balance competing issues. One aspect of this challenge was raised with regard to the Update Sheet which Members received 24 hours prior to their Committee meeting. It was important to note that committee reports were drafted two weeks prior to a meeting and in that time, additional information sometimes came forward. That additional information was presented on the Update Sheet for the Committee and the public when it was published on the Council’s website. As presented at Planning Committee North the previous week, Members needed to read the Update Sheet prior to the meeting and the Chairman sought assurances that the document had been read. If appropriate, a meeting might need to adjourn for five minutes to ensure the submissions had been fully read.
In conclusion, the Head of Planning and Coastal Management was pleased that each of the matters had been found in favour of the Council. There were learning points moving forward which would help further develop robust training plans for the Committee and officers.
Members commented on and asked specific questions relating to:
• If criticism was due to the Council’s wrong doing.
• Planning decisions at local level not being judged.
• The importance of undertaking site visits.
• Costs involved and officer time.
The Head of Planning and Coastal Management advised that the Council had not acted wrongly but care needed to be taken in presenting information in the Update Sheet for Committees. Site visits, when undertaken, played an important part for Members to enable them to be completely aware of balancing all relevant planning matters. He confirmed the well known principle that legal challenges were not challenging the decision but how it was arrived at. The estimated cost of engaging legal Counsel was around £70,000 as detailed in paragraph 3.3 in the report and that amount had not taken into account the cost of officers’ time.
The Cabinet Member moved the recommendation and having been duly seconded, it was unanimously
RESOLVED
That the contents of the report be noted and that, to ensure the Council continues to make sound planning decisions, the matters raised in section 2 of the report, following dialogue with the Cabinet Member and Planning Committee Chairman, be incorporated in to the training plans for Officers and Members.