A lesson for new Planning Committee Members

Good morning, Councillors, well done for getting elected and appointed to the Planning Committee. Now please sit down and take out your pencils and notepads and pay attention. There will be a test afterwards.

Rule number one: Your job on the Planning Committee is to encourage development to solve the housing crisis, to approve places of employment to attract investment and to ensure that renewable energy sources are approved in the Council of which you are a member.

This is a very, very big responsibility and you need to take your duties with the required seriousness. You are sitting in a quasi-judicial capacity and your actions do have legal consequences. If you turn an application down it needs to be for legal reasons and NOT because you don’t like it or the NIMBYs lobbied you.

And if you do vote it down without legal reasons (material grounds) you need to realise that there are wider consequences… There is likely to be an appeal and that involves very expensive barristers that cost a lot of money and if your reasons aren’t legal, your Council is likely to have costs awarded against it. You have to ask yourself, “is this a good use of taxpayers’ money?” because money you waste on failed appeals is a library you need to close or a children’s play group for which you have to cut funding.

Now I know some of you may think “I was elected to represent the views of the people and the officers got it wrong”. Let me explain: there are lots of professionals who draw up the plans in front of you and they are experts who consider every aspect (transport, roads, flooding, design etc) and then draw up plans that comply with planning law. They studied for years at university and have professional qualifications.

These plans the professionals drew up are then submitted to professional planners (who studied for years) at your council who assess them against legal planning policy and make a professional recommendation to you as members of the Planning Committee.

So, you need to take into consideration that the advice you are given is professional advice and being in a quasi-judicial capacity you have an obligation to take their advice on board when you are deciding how you are going to vote.

Ignorance of the law is NOT a defence and you need to attend training sessions on planning law. There is national planning law (Town and Country Planning Act, Localism Act and the NPPF etc) and local planning policy that your council wrote and adopted (the Local Plan forms part of this). You have a duty to read and understand this law to make informed and legally sound decisions. So read it, and understand it and if you don’t feel free to call me and I will help you.

So, in summary: You have a very important and responsible job. Carry it out with the due care and attention and if you don’t, remember there are consequences!

Until next week,

Henry