Agenda item - Public Questions

Written Questions: to receive any questions submitted by the due date of 12 noon on Tuesday 27 March 2018.

120.1    The Chair Invited Mr Hawtree to ask his question:

“Would Councillor Cattell please tell us why Planning Application BH2017/03940, about the ground floor of Hove’s Carnegie Library, was decided under Delegated Powers?”

120.2    The Chair Responded:

“The planning application for listed building consent for Hove Library was decided under delegated powers in accordance with the Scheme of Delegation which is set out in the Constitution of the Council.  To ensure there is consistency of approach between applications there is not scope for flexibility in how the Scheme of Delegation is applied.

In the case of this application, only 4 objections were received within the consultation period.  The Scheme of Delegation requires receipt of 5 or more written objections within the consultation period, which is 21 days, to trigger a referral to committee. The consultation period for this application actually ran for 28 Days. There were an additional nine objections received but outside the consultation period.

One of the 9 later letters was from a ward councillor requesting the application be determined by Planning Committee.  The Scheme of Delegation also requires requests from ward councillors to be received within the 21 day consultation period. 

Members and residents can be assured that the application was given careful consideration and was supported by the Heritage Experts at the city council.”

120.3  Mr Hawtree asked if the Chair would ask for the application to be brought to the Planning Committee for decision as it had been a complex application and in his opinion the full impact of the application had not been made clear to interested parties until after the consultation period had closed.

120.4  The Chair responded that the decision had been taken by Officers in line with the Constitution and if the report came to Committee it would just be for information.

120.5  Councillor Miller raised a point of order as he had received an email from a Planning Officer that suggested the public notice was only displayed from 29December 2017.

120.6  The Planning Manager confirmed that the consultation period began on 8 December 2017 when the public notice was displayed and ended on 5 January 2018.

120.7  Councillor Mac Cafferty stated that the Planning Team usually seemed more flexible in taking late objections into account; especially as only one additional objection would have been needed to require the application to come to the Planning Committee.

120.8  The Legal Adviser responded that there were two separate processes for objections. When the application was out to consultation only in time objections counted towards the number required to refer an application to Planning Committee.. If an application was referred to the Planning Committee, the committee could take into account any late representations made up until the date of the committee.

120.9  The Chair stated that the additional late objections were made some time after the consultation period ended; they were not simply a matter of hours or days late.

120.10Councillor Mac Cafferty asked why the planning register listed the application for Hove Library as still under consideration.

120.11The Chair responded that the application in the planning register was a separate application for listed building consent.

120.12Councillor Theobald stated that she felt that as the building was such a valuable public asset it should have automatically been considered by committee.

120.13The Legal adviser stated that the Constitution did not distinguish between council owned and private properties in the planning delegations. The Planning Committee Working Group may wish to raise this at their next meeting.