Issue - meetings

The Committee was reminded that at its meeting held on 16 June 2022, it was agreed that future planning appeals monitoring reports be presented annually, to see if any patterns were emerging in respect of member overturns, costs of overturn appeals and costs awards. 

The Committee considered a further updated monitoring report on planning appeals, which focused on data relating to the years 2021-2023.

Officers had attached commentary to each year's report which looked at the proportion of appeals allowed in respect of member overturn decisions and overall appeal performance.  The report had also included details of the range of costs associated with defending appeals together with the key risks and financial implications. 

The Committee noted that a detailed report on planning appeals, including details of cost applications, was reported to every meeting of the Planning Committee. The information contained in the monitoring report had been taken from the information contained on previous Planning Committee agendas.   

The report had highlighted that the Council’s success rate on appeals was improving year on year, which was particularly important as this was one of the measures that DLUHC used to assess the Council’s performance as a planning authority.  Along with the speed at which applications were determined, DLUHC also measured quality of decisions over a two-year rolling programme.  Paragraph 7.7 of the report had set out the published current performance on quality of decision-making for both major and non-major applications. 

There was also a detailed monthly training programme that had been developed for members and officers with a different topic each month which would be rolled out shortly.   

During the debate, the following points were raised:

·      Clarification was sought as to the criteria by which the Secretary of State had stated that the Council was at risk of designation in terms of the determination of planning applications.  In response, the Joint Executive Head of Planning Development indicated that it was in respect of a specific performance measurement, namely the speed at which non-major applications were being determined.  The measures to be taken to avoid designation were meant to achieve 70% within the 8-week period over a rolling 2 year programme. Performance had significantly improved for the quarter January to March 2023, where we achieved 72%, and the period April to June, where we achieved 82% of determination on non-major applications.

·      It was noted that the criteria for designation of a local planning authority could either be the speed of determining applications or quality of decisions. Quality of decisions was measured by overturns of committee decisions at appeal and was the focus of this planning appeals monitoring report. However, the report lacked any data on the first reason for possible designation, the speed of decisions in determining or not determining planning applications within statutory time periods.

·      Concerns were reiterated regarding the number of applications appealed on the grounds on non-determination by the Council, in that this could make a designation more likely and lead to awards of costs against the Council. There was  ...  view the full minutes text for item 20

The Committee considered the monitoring report on planning appeals, which focused on ‘overturn’ appeals data and ‘costs’ data for 2019, 2020 and 2021. It was suggested, for future reports, that this would be linked to Government performance figures on appeals.

Officers had attached commentary to each year's report which looked at the proportion of appeals allowed in respect of member overturn decisions and overall appeal performance.  The report had also included details of the range of costs associated with defending appeals together with the key risks and financial implications. 

The previous six months had not presented a particularly clear picture on the trend of appeal decisions.  Delays in receiving appeal decisions remained significant.   

The report had recommended that, in future, this monitoring report be presented annually to the Committee as the timing of appeal decisions meant that twice yearly reporting did not present sufficient data to establish a trend or meaningful update.

The Chairman reported that, earlier in the day, he and a number of other councillors had received correspondence from a member of public in relation to the report alleging some inaccuracies in the figures, and requested that after officers had had the opportunity of reviewing the correspondence, the Committee be updated if necessary.

During the debate, the following points were raised:

·       It was suggested that, in addition to cost implications associated with defending appeals, there were environmental and social costs associated with inappropriate development and the Planning Committee should not be put under pressure to approve such development on the basis of financial cost implications of defending a refusal. In response, it was noted that those appeals that had been dismissed had demonstrated the extent to which officers had supported Councillor overturn decisions, but it was important for councillors to understand cost implications as part of responsible decision making.

·       In response to a request for an update on the number of appeals in respect of the non-determination of planning applications by the Council, the Interim Head of Place confirmed that with the continuing high workloads there had been an increase in non-determination appeals, however many of those were likely to have ended up at appeal in any event. It was suggested that future reports could include the number appeals submitted in respect of non-determination.

·       The Committee would be able to gauge the impact of the emerging Development Management Policies on appeals in future monitoring reports.

·       It was suggested that, given the time taken for appeal outcomes to be published and to ensure more meaningful trends and information can be reported, future monitoring reports should be submitted to the Committee annually.

·       It was also suggested that the summary table in paragraph 3.1 of the report could in future include the information provided as percentage figures and also show the total number of appeals in progress and some indication of the stage at which they were progressing.

Having considered the report, the Committee

RESOLVED: That the contents of the update report and data be noted and that future  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7

The Committee considered the third monitoring report on planning appeals, which focused on ‘overturn’ appeals data and ‘costs’ data for 2018, compared with 2019, 2020 and (up to November) 2021.

The report had suggested that, in future, the focus should be on appeal decisions covering the previous two calendar years which would allow a greater focus on the analysis of the decisions presented, and attention was drawn to the number of Planning Committee decisions in 2020, which was lower than other years due to the cancellation of several meetings as a result of the national Covid lockdown measures in place.  The overall number of appeal decisions had also been lower in 2021 in part due to the same reasons.

Officers had attached commentary to each year's report which looked at the proportion of appeals allowed in respect of member overturn decisions and overall appeal performance.  The report noted that there was a consistent trend regarding the number of appeals being allowed in respect of Planning Committee decisions being considerably higher than overall appeal decisions. 

The report had also included details of the range of costs associated with defending appeals together with the key risks and financial implications.  The report had recommended that, in future, this monitoring report be presented annually to the Committee as the timing of appeal decisions meant that twice yearly reporting did not present sufficient data to establish a trend or meaningful update.

The Lead Councillor for Development Management commented on the opportunity cost associated with officers working on defending planning appeals which meant that officers could not work on other planning applications.

During the debate, the following points were raised:

·         In response to concerns over the veracity of information provided in the report, the Committee noted that the information contained both the appeal outcomes generally (i.e. the outcome of all planning appeals) and specifically the outcome of appeals in respect of committee overturns.

·         In response to concerns regarding use of the full resources of the Council in respect of appeals against Planning Committee overturns, the Interim Head of Place confirmed that all appeals are robustly defended to the best of officers’ ability, irrespective of the decision-maker.

·         Where an overturn is contemplated by the Planning Committee, discussion as to likely outcome of an appeal should be avoided, or at least discussed using neutral language.

·       The importance of the need for ongoing training for Planning Committee members was again emphasised, particularly with a view to improving the quality of decision making to enable councillors to reach their own conclusions on the planning merits of individual applications.

·       In response to a concern over the number of appeals in respect of the non-determination of planning applications by the Council and a request for a moratorium on acceptance of applications, the Committee noted that the volume of applications that the Planning team was currently working on had almost doubled compared to the levels at the beginning of the pandemic.  This had led to the Council having to use  ...  view the full minutes text for item 40