Minutes of the Planning Committee Meeting of the Parish Council 9th January 2025
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| Present: | Chair: Cllr Sheppard |
| Council Members: | Cllr Bingham, Cllr Bray, Cllr Collon, Cllr Herbert, and Cllr Holt |
| In attendance: | Dawn Lacey (Parish Clerk & RFO) Non-voting Advisor: John Bamford Three members of the public |
| 1. | Apologies for absence. |
| Apologies from Cllr Moon and also Non-Voting Advisors John Burns and Vanessa Relleen. Cllr Bingham had informed the Clerk that she would be late to the meeting; she arrived at 7.45pm. |
| 2. | Declarations of interest in the agenda. |
| None. |
| 3. | Confirm the minutes of the 5th December 2024 Planning Committee meeting. | |
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| 4. | Review actioning of items from previous minutes and agree any further action required. |
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| 5. | To answer any questions from members of the public. |
| There were two questions and the answer to these are attached to the minutes (Appendix 1). |
| 6. | Review planning correspondence, notification of applications and outstanding results and agree any action required. |
| None. |
| 7. | Review Report on Applications Decided, and Appeals Lodged and Decided since last meeting and agree any action required. |
| Cllr Sheppard to contact NVA Vanessa Relleen to organise an informal get-together. ACTION: Cllr Sheppard. Pγ001 |
| 8. | Discuss planning applications from Elmbridge Borough Council (EBC) Weekly Planning Lists (https://www.elmbridge.gov.uk/planning) for the following weeks and agree responses required: w/e 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th December. |
| Please see attached letters to EBC T Plan (Appendix 2). |
| 9. | Receive a report on EBCβs East Area subcommittee Meeting and agree any action required. |
| Nothing to report. The next meeting will be held on Monday 13th January. |
| 10. | Receive a report on EBCβs Planning Committee Meeting and agree any action required. |
| Nothing to report. The next meeting will be held on Tuesday 14th January. |
| 11. | To consider NPPF and Elmbridge Local Plan developments and agree any action required. |
| There is currently nothing new to report on this as further guidance is still being waited on regarding green belt. Councillors will continue to monitor and new developments. ACTION β Planning Councillors. Pγ002 |
| 12. | Discuss any communication of key decisions to residents and agree any action required. |
| None at this time. |
| 13. | Matters for information purposes only. |
| None. |
| 14. | Date of the next meeting. |
| Date of the next meeting: 7.30pm Thursday 6th February 2025, Claygate Village Hall, Small Hall, Church Road, Claygate KT10 0JP. |
APPENDIX 1: Questions to the Chair of Planning
1. The East Area Planning Committee has cancelled its last three monthly meetings. So why is our Planning Committee still meeting monthly, given the escalation of matters to East Area is its primary goal?
Background to the Question: In an important paper published in August of last year, Cllr Collon pointed out that it is now Elmbridge policy that residential planning applications objected to by the Parish Council or by15+ residents are no longer being considered by the East Area Planning Committee unless the applications have been referred by an Elmbridge ward councillor.
A question was put to the Parish Council Planning Committee in September asking why it was bothering to hold monthly planning meetings now that the monthly East Area meetings were no longer automatically considering the applications which Claygate had objected to.
The reply came back that: "We would like the situation where CPC objections are automatically referred to the East Area Planning Sub-Committee restored."
But it would appear that the East Area Planning Committee is itself barely functioning: October's meeting was cancelled, as was November's, as was December's. September was the last meeting actually held, and it had only one application to consider.
The direction of travel now seems quite clear. And compared to the two enormous threats to Elmbridge Council coming from on high—in particular, government-directed planning targets and the threat of Elmbridge being forcibly subsumed into a unitary Surrey Authority—the idea of Elmbridge granting this procedural request from a Parish Council seems a fantasy.
- So why is the Parish Council's powerless Planning Committee still bothering to meet once a month to reach an agreed position when the senior Planning Committee at Elmbridge, which genuinely does have power, hasn't met for the past three months?
- If individuals—whether councillors or not—want to occupy themselves with the minutiae of particular residential applications, then it remains their right to lodge an objection as an individual. But does it represent good value for the council tax payer if the Parish Council continues to hold committee meetings to reach agreed positions on such minutiae when its views will very likely make zero difference to what happens?
CPC Answer: We answered a very similar question in November and the position has not changed. The fact that EBC's Planning Committees have not found it necessary to meet recently does not change the position. As I said in November, "The Parish Council is a consultee on most types of planning applications. Furthermore, if we abandoned our cycle of monthly meetings and then a seriously undesirable application came in, we would have to rush round and arrange a special meeting, with a risk of difficulties finding a date and then missing EBC's deadline for comment. Things are quiet at present, but once EBC get going with rewriting the Local Plan, we will probably have to plenty to do.
Please also note that the main planning committee of EBC is not the same as East Area and our sole purpose is not only to feed East Area with objections. We also feed the main planning committee with important local views via direct feedback to the specific planning officer concerned. In order to respond within EBC's time frame, we need to meet monthly.
On the question of costs to tax payers, the only costs involved in these meetings are room hire and the cost of the clerk.
2. Why not give our Planning Committee responsibility for Parish Council Finance?
Background to the Question:
- Many business organisations integrate finance and planning within the same department.
- It seems that too much budgetary responsibility is currently loaded on one or two people: the chair and the Clerk. There is no reason why this burden could not be spread across more councillors.
- The handling of grant requests seems more ad hoc than perhaps it needs be. Some forward planning might be possible if likely requesters were encouraged to give advance warning of their requests. Managing that flow of future applications would be helpful to the Parish Council's financial planning.
- Of course, like all council committees, it would continue to be a provider of advice rather than a decision-maker.
CPC Answer: This Committee deals with Town Planning, not business or corporate planning, so combining it with Finance would not work. Some Town Councils, with much larger budgets and wider responsibilities, have a dedicated Finance Committee, but so far our budgeting and finance is simple enough not to need that. If, as a result of Govt moves to abolish Borough/District Councils, we acquired significantly greater responsibilities, we would probably need to review how we manage our finances.
In terms of budget planning the responsibility is spread across the full council. The full council met to review a draft budget and the full council are meeting this month to approve a budget. This works well; budgeting via a separate Finance Committee would simply mean all the paperwork having to be formally reviewed twice for no real benefit.
We doubt it is practical to plan for grants in the way suggested. The processing of these applications is not onerous and grants have been dealt with this way for many years without issue.
