Babergh and Mid Suffolk District Councils
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Agenda item

Cabinet Member for Planning

Minutes:

 

Councillor Burn introduced the report and informed Council that it had come a long way since the first few parishes began the neighbourhood planning journey.  The Council’s internal decision- making procedures had served us well, and the Council had continued to find ways to improve on the way we interact with our NP Groups, including placing greater emphasis on the earlier informative stages.  Most importantly of all, the Council continued to think about what we can do better. 

 

Councillor Burn said that the report before Councillors today was self-explanatory.  It looked at two key regulatory processes that fall to this Council:  

 

        decision making on the recommendations set out in the independent examiners report, and the advancement of that Plan to referendum (Regulation 17A), and 

 

        subject to a majority yes vote, the adoption of the Plan (Regulation 18A).

 

The report proposed changes to the agreed procedures which, with appropriate checks in place, should ensure that the Council can be ‘better, smarter and swifter’ in the way its guided neighbourhood plans through these stages.

 

In Mid Suffolk to date, 15 NPs have been through the examination process.  Of those, 11 have now been adopted and 4 were in the final stages of being modified prior to being made ready to go to referendum.

 

In all cases, no objections were raised by either the District or Parish Council to implementing in full the examiners recommendations. That would suggest that earlier and on-going engagement with these groups was working.

 

Councillor Burn trusted that the Council would agree with him that the proposed changes to how the Council managed Regulation 17A and 18A stages were both sensible and practical. 

 

In simple terms, this would remove the need for Cabinet to specifically approve the progression of a neighbourhood plan to referendum and would simplify the process by which the Council adopted a Neighbourhood Plan where it has received a majority yes vote.

 

Councillor Burn then MOVED the recommendations in the report which Councillor Guthrie SECONDED

 

Councillor Mansel asked if there were any plans to speed up the earlier engagement exercises between the Neighbourhood Plan Groups and the Council.

 

In response the Corporate Manager for Strategic Planning confirmed that in the past six months two new members of staff had been recruited and were being trained up on the neighbourhood plan process.

 

Councillor Welham queried under the new arrangements where the delegation was given to officers whether the officers had sufficient capacity to deal with their additional responsibilities

 

In response the Chief Executive confirmed that they would have sufficient capacity and said that the recommendations actually meant less work for officers not more.

 

By unanimous vote

 

It was RESOLVED: -

 

(1)       That the procedure for automatically taking a post-examination Neighbourhood Plan to Cabinet seeking approval to proceed to Referendum be changed. The proposal would automatically allow a Plan to proceed to referendum where the parish and district council have agreed to implement any required modifications. Where there are other considerations, a report will still be presented to Cabinet. The revised procedures would allow prompt publication of a decision notice, reduced administrative work, and ensure closer compliance with the relevant regulations.

(2)       That the procedure that requires taking a post-Referendum Neighbourhood Plan with a majority ‘yes’ vote to Council seeking formal adoption be changed. The new proposal, which would be to obtain Chief Executive approval endorsed by the Cabinet Members for Planning, would enable a Neighbourhood Plan agreed at Referendum to be formally adopted quickly, efficiently, and within the eight-week statutory time limit.

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