Agenda item

The Committee noted that it had previously been agreed to submit monitoring reports on planning appeals on an annual basis to see if any patterns were emerging in respect of member overturns, costs of overturn appeals and costs awards. The Committee considered the most recent monitoring report which sought to identify targeted training for members of the Planning Committee and its substitutes.

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. 

In introducing the report, the Assistant Director for Planning Development informed the Committee of the outcomes of two key planning appeals that had recently been announced by the Planning Inspectorate, namely the Wisley appeal (which had been allowed), and the Cathedral appeal (which had been dismissed).

The Committee’s attention was drawn to the statistical information within the report which indicated that there had been progressively fewer overturns year on year.  The report had provided an overview of performance for appeal decisions in 2023, which showed that in 2023, there had been a slight decrease in the percentage of appeals dismissed, compared with 2022.

During the debate, the following points were made:

·      In response to a query as to the apparent duplication of information in the table in paragraph 7.2 of the report relating to application 22/P/01151 (Pit Farm, Guildford), and the error in respect of the application number for the appeal regarding 12 Oak Hill Wood Street Village, the Assistant Director for Planning Development would clarify the position by way of an email to the Committee.

·      Question as to whether the Committee could ask the Council to make representations to Surrey County Council regarding advice on infrastructure provision given as part of the consideration of planning applications, the concern being that they did not appear to recognise the need for greater infrastructure provision when commenting on planning applications.  In response, the Assistant Director for Planning Development indicated that there was some considerable work going on around the relationship between the county and the borough and the way we looked at the infrastructure requirements resulting from development and ensuring that we were achieving what was necessary to mitigate the impact of development on the environment and ensure that appropriate infrastructure was delivered. 

·      In response to a question as to whether, given that the budget provision for appeals was low and was regularly exceeded, it might be appropriate to make a recommendation to the Executive to increase the budget at least to a base level that is spent year-on-year, the Assistant Director for Planning Development indicated that she would be happy to speak to the Director of Finance about the budget but it was very difficult to forecast what level of provision should be made in the budget each year to fund the cost of appeals.

·      In response to a request for details of the total cost to the Council of the Wisley appeal, the Assistant Director for Planning Development indicated that it was very likely that details of the appeal including the costs would be presented to the Planning Committee in advance of next year’s annual monitoring report.

·      Whilst the report looked at the quality of planning decisions made, as measured by overturns at appeal, it continued to lack details of the speed at which planning decisions were being determined, which was the second reason that DLUHC could designate a local planning authority.  It was suggested that future reports provide this information. In response to a question as to whether the Council had stayed above the 70% target for the speed of decision making throughout the course of the past year, for major and non-major applications, and whether any applications had not been determined within 26 weeks, the Assistant Director for Planning Development indicated that the Council had not been designated and that the Council’s performance had been in excess of the national targets of 60% for majors, 70%, for non-majors and had continued to be maintained well in excess of those targets.  The Assistant Director would send an e-mail to the committee to share details of the Council’s performance in that regard.

·      It was noted that details of the performance of the planning development service in terms of speed of determination of planning applications was reported as part of the quarterly Corporate Performance Management Report to Overview and Scrutiny.

Having considered the report, the Committee

RESOLVED: That the contents of the revised Planning Appeals Monitoring Report and data be noted.

Reason:

To enable the Committee to monitor the Council’s performance on planning appeals.