Issue - meetings
Recommendations from the Executive Cabinet
Meeting: 21/10/2020 - Council (Item 31)
31 Recommendations from the Cabinet 
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To consider the recommendations from the meeting(s) of the Cabinet held on 14th October 2020.
Minutes:
It was noted that the recommendations from the Cabinet meeting held on 14th October were included within the supplementary agenda pack, which Members had received electronically. The background papers to the recommendations were included in the main agenda pack on pages 53 to 85.
Planning for the Future White Paper and Changes to the Planning System – BDC responses
Councillor A Kent, Deputy Leader and the Portfolio Holder for Planning and Regulatory Services, confirmed that he would be recommending that the Council submitted appendix A (as detailed in the agenda pack) to MHCLG as the Council’s response to the ‘Planning for the Future’ White Paper and that appendix B be confirmed as the its response to the Changes to the Planning System Consultation. He took the opportunity to thank all Members that had attended the two Strategic Planning Steering Group (SPSG) meetings where the papers had been discussed in detail.
Whilst Councillor Kent acknowledged that most people had participated in the SPSG meetings, he took Council through some of the key areas within the documents. These were:
· The Council’s response under section 1.3 (page 57 of agenda packs) where the Council was resisting removing villages from the Greenbelt and made this point very clearly.
· Section 1.4 (page 58 of agenda packs) Protected Areas - if an area was not protected it could be developed – the Council requested further clarity in respect of this. The desire for self-build and modular homes to be included in all development areas was also being requested.
· Section 2.1 (page 59 of the agenda pack) There was great concern around limiting the development management policies.
· Section 2.4 this was focused on the automation of planning applications and whilst Councillor Kent was focused on automation, he did not believe that replacing officers and Members with such a system – so the Council still required a human touch but would still like to see applications being processed more efficiently in the future.
· Section 3.2 (page 60 of the agenda pack) The removal of the duty to co-operate was welcome as it was felt that this had not worked successful for this Council and had also delayed the process.
· Section 3.3 the removal of the sustainability appraisal was also welcomed for the reasons specified.
· Section 3.4 was in respect of reserved sites. Councillor Kent acknowledged that this Council had not delivered the level of housing that it should have and specifically this was often due to not having sites available on time to meet the needs. The use of reserved sites would be useful in this respect.
· Section 4.1 (page 61 of the agenda pack) was in respect of the Greenbelt, whilst the Council remained supportive of the method to determine housing need it was also very cautious as the biggest unknown was to how land constraints would be factored in. Until the precise weighting was known it would be difficult to plan for the future and concerns were raised around how the Council would reach the ... view the full minutes text for item 31