Porty wrote:Might seem like a simplistic question; for the uninitated, can you explain the role of the Planners in the process and that of the commitee and what their skill sets are?
There’s an aspect of the planning system that needs to be appreciated, and it may be worth explaining some of the history.
It’s become more complex but the planning system we have today was essentially created in 1947. Prior to that there really wasn’t much of system to control development. There were some national and local planning acts, bye-laws etc but it was a bit haphazard and had evolved from a position where, if you owned a bit of land, you could build whatever you wanted. Although there were restrictions, the default position was that you didn’t need permission for development.
The 1947 Planning Act ended that. It took away that underlying right to build what you wanted on your own land without permission. Development rights were effectively nationalised; taken over by the state. Since then the default position has been that you need permission for development. There are of course ‘permitted development rights’, but those ‘rights’ are bestowed by the authorities.
However, in exchange for taking away the right to develop without permission, the system was set up so that there is a presumption in favour of development. If you comply with the planning policies then you are entitled to permission. And you’re entitled to it regardless of how many people don’t like what you’re proposing.
That’s a fundamental principle underlying the planning system that causes all sorts of grief.
Because planning policies are so complex you need a technical assessment of whether something complies and that requires specialist knowledge; planning officers. They might look at a proposal in detail, against the relevant policies and conclude that it meets them. Polices are not only complex but they’re also open to interpretation, so sometimes that decision might be marginal, sometimes it might be ’wrong’. But if they think it complies they must recommend approval to the Councillors on the Planning Committee.
But those Councillors may be getting a barrage of letters and e-mails from irate residents who very much don’t want what’s being proposed. Those irate residents may or may not reflect the views of the community at large, but it’s very difficult for the Councillors to know since almost nobody ever writes in favour of something. They only ever hear the negative.
Councillors being politicians, their natural instinct is to trim their sails to the prevailing wind and they may want to go against the officer’s recommendation but they can only do so on legitimate planning grounds; they need an actual policy. If they refused an application without a policy to pin it on they’d be in trouble. But Councillors have to deal with all sorts of things, and just because they’re on a Planning Committee doesn’t mean they have any great knowledge of planning policies. Some of them might, particularly over time, but by and large they don’t.
So when the Committee is ‘minded to refuse’ against officer recommendation, officers then have to go away and find some planning policy to justify that position. Sometimes that can be a reasonable alternative interpretation of policy, sometimes it’s clasping at straws. I’ve seen some laughable attempts to justify a clearly unjustifiable refusal.
