(Agenda item added to the agenda at the request of the Area Committee of the County Association of Local Councils)
Issues raised included failure to notify Parishes of applications and the difficulty of identifying applications within the parish, and the difficulty of reading some of the plans online. Please could performance statistics also be provided for the length of time taken to process applications within the District.
Minutes:
Mr. J. Cypher spoke on behalf of Parish Clerks / Executive Officers and raised a number of concerns over problems which had been encountered with their use of the Public Access Planning Application Administration System. Mr. Cypher stated that there were four main areas of concern with the system, namely:
(a) Increased time-load; that is, obtaining / downloading relevant information from the Public Access system, and collating the paperwork in a format which can be presented to meetings of the Parish Council or the Parish Council's Planning Committee. Mr. Cypher stated that the Parish Clerks / Executive Officers work on a part-time basis but the length of time taken in obtaining information relating to planning applications means that, because of Public Access, they are increasingly having to work longer hours.
(b) Non-notification of planning applications - where notification of a planning application received by the District Council fails to reach the relevant Parish Clerk / Executive Officer. Mr. Cypher quoted one example whereby an application for a development of 18 new dwellings had not been considered by the relevant Parish Council Planning Committee because the notification had not reached the Parish Clerk / Executive Officer.
A query was also raised in connection with the "Weekly List" which was supposedly meant to notify Parish Clerks / Executive Officers of all planning applications validated during a particular week, even if the Public Access system was unavailable. It was felt that there were failings in the production of the "Weekly List" as well, with the combined result that these notification issues were compounding each other.
(c) Non-appearance of Parish Council comments - where parish council's do consider applications and make comments via the Public Access system, these comments do not seem to appear on the website. As a result, this prompts questions from adjacent occupiers, interested parties, villages, objectors and supporters as to whether the parish council had discussed the application, had the comments been communicated back to the District Council, and does the District Council know what was said? Overall, the comments facility does not seem to be operating satisfactorily.
(d) Mechanism of submitting comments on the Public Access system - the District Council has encouraged Parish Clerks / Executive Officers to use the Public Access system to record their respective parish council's deliberations and comments on planning applications which they have considered. However, it has been noticed that, having entered the parish council's comments into the relevant field on the Public Access system, and upon hitting the 'Submit' button, two successive error messages appear on screen before the system responds with a "Thank you for your comments" message. Obviously, the two error messages raise the question "Have the comments actually got through; should I email the comments through separately?"
In summary, Mr. Cypher stated that the Parish Clerks / Executive Officers are finding the system unnecessarily time consuming and, whilst Public Access is not deliberately working against the Parish Clerks / Executive Officers, it is not being co-operative in the way in which it interfaces with the job the Parish Clerks / Executive Officers have to do, often with insufficient or limited hours available to them to complete the task. In short, he commented that the Public Access system is a system requiring investigation.
Mr. C. R. Scurrell echoed the points raised by Mr. Cypher and added that, in some cases, the reproduction of images on plans and drawings could be difficult to discern because it was so faint that the detail was lost and became illegible.
In response, Mrs. R. Bamford - the Head of Planning and Regeneration Services - thanked the Forum for the clear comments as to the issues relating to the Public Access system and, with the exception of one or two of the detailed problems, she conceded that she was aware of the inherent problems with the software. However, she stated that, unfortunately, there was no "quick fix" to remedy all of the 'bugs' in the Public Access system, but that she, and the officers within the Development Control Section, would investigate ways of working around the problems to make things easier for the Parish Clerks / Executive Officers.
As a general approach, Mrs. Bamford suggested that a meeting be arranged with herself, an officer from the ICT Department and Mr. Cypher (as spokesperson for the Parish Clerks / Executive Officers) to look into what can be done and investigate ways of working together. She added that, whilst she had every sympathy with the problems being experienced by the Parish Clerks, Executive Officers and Parish Councillors, due to the current financial situation, it was going to be difficult to sort out all of the issues raised very quickly; however, she was aware of the current limitations of the Public Access system.
Mrs. Bamford stated that, in relation to the points raised by the Parish Councils, she had obtained a written response in advance of the meeting from an officer within the Planning Registration Team - Mr. Paul Murphy (01527 881201; p.murphy@bromsgrove.gov.uk) - who would be willing to help work around the problems encountered in the use of the Public Access System. Mrs. Bamford responded to the points raised by the parish councils, details of which are attached at Appendix A. In addition, where plans / drawings relating to planning applications were of poor quality via the Public Access system, or where downloading a plan / drawing was taking an inordinate amount of time, she stated that the information could be emailed to Parish Clerks / Executive Officers upon request to the relevant planning case officer.
It was reported that each Parish Council should receive a formal notification of every planning application submitted within their respective parish area, but it appeared that this was not necessarily the case for all applications. Mrs. Bamford stated that she would look into this but, in the meantime, the Weekly List could be used by way of a back up facility.
In respect of the non-appearance of comments on Planning Applications, it was acknowledged that there were a number of known faults which were being investigated but, from the discussion, some Members of the Forum stated that the 'Comments' field within the Public Access system, used by Parish Clerks / Executive Officers when forwarding the opinions of their respective parish councils of the various planning applications they consider, was rather limited in terms of the amount of space to state objections or support for an application, together with the reasons for taking that particular view. In addition, there was no indication that some comments were being truncated which, combined with the fact that the comments were not visible online, meant that Members felt the Public Access system was currently not fit for purpose.
Mrs. Bamford stated that the current issues and problems with the Public Access system would be looked into in the short-term on a piecemeal basis but added that this would all be part of a wider ranging review of the system, set to start towards the end of the year as part of the business transformation proposals, which would also heavily involve the District Council's ICT Department. She also welcomed the suggestion of a representative from the parish councils becoming involved in the work to remedy the problems with the Public Access system.
Incidentally, the Chairman referred to an Overview and Scrutiny Task Group due to be set up in the near future to look into the planning process and the Task Group will, no doubt, be inviting Parish Clerks / Executive Officers to participate in the scrutiny exercise as witnesses to the investigations.