Planning Committee 15th August 2024 Agenda

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Dawn Lacey — Parish Clerk & RFO

claygate PARISH COUNCIL

caring for Claygate Village

Claygate Parish Council

Claygate Village Hall

Church Road

Claygate

Surrey KT10 0JP

☎ 07741 848 719

email: clerk@claygateparishcouncil.gov.uk

website: www.claygateparishcouncil.gov.uk

YOU ARE HEREBY SUMMONED TO ATTEND

A Meeting of Planning Committee of Claygate Parish Council will be held on Thursday 18th July 2024 at 7.30pm at Claygate Village Hall (Main Hall) Church Road, Claygate

The meeting is open to the public and press. A quarter of an hour has been reserved for members of the public to address the Council, for three minutes each, on any subject relevant to the agenda. In order to address the meeting, we would appreciate you contacting the Parish Clerk before 11am on the day of the meeting who will allocate a slot. All meetings will operate to our Privacy Policy which can be found at www.claygateparishcouncil.gov.uk. Doors will open at 7.20pm.

Covid 19

If attendees have any of the main symptoms of Covid-19 and/or have tested positive for Covid prior to the meeting, you should not attend. Please refer to www.gov.uk for full guidelines.

Parish Clerk & RFO

AGENDA

1. Apologies for absence.
2. Declarations of Interest in items on the agenda.
3. Confirm the minutes of the 18th July 2024 Planning Committee meeting.
4. Review actioning of items from previous minutes and agree any further action required. (Appendix 1)
5. Review planning correspondence, notification of applications and outstanding results and agree any action required.
6. Objections to householder applications: to agree the recommendation in Cllr Collon’s note of 23rd July 2024 (Appendix 2)
7. Review Report on Applications Decided, and Appeals Lodged and Decided since last meeting and agree any action required. (Appendix 3)
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 19th July, 26th July, 2nd August and 9th August 2024 (Appendix 4)
9. Receive a report on EBC’s East Area Sub Committee Meeting and agree any action required.
10. Receive a report on EBC’s Planning Committee Meeting and agree any action required.
11. Review any Compliance issues in Claygate and agree any action required.
11 Elm Gardens – this is still ongoing with EBC
12. To consider Government proposals to revise the NPPF and other Planning regulations and to agree any actions
13. To consider appointing Two Members of the Committee to join the Claygate Conservation Advisory Panel/Committee and if approved to organise the training
14. Discuss any Communication of key decisions to Residents and agree any action required.
15. Matters for information purposes only.
16. Date of the next meeting 7.30pm Thursday 12th September 2024, Treetops Pavillion, Recreation Ground, Church Road, Claygate KT10 0JP

Appendix 1: ACTIONS from the CPC Planning Meeting of 18th July to be discussed at the meeting of 15th August

ACTIONS:	DESCRIPTION	CLLR	STATUS
Item 7	Reviewing reports on Applications decided, and appeals lodged and decided – to put together an agenda of some applications where CPC and EBC took different views and which could be discussed at a mutual meeting in the future with T-Plan	Cllr Sheppard
Item 13:d	Communications on the above matters – Cllr Bray had drafted a piece for the website & Facebook and urged early publication	Cllr Bray
Item 15	Discussing any Communications or Key decisions to residents – A member of the public requested regular updates on what CPC is doing in the Village	Cllr Holt

Appendix 2: Claygate Parish Council: Objections to Planning Decisions

At the meeting of the Planning Committee on 18 July 2024 I was asked to explain when an objection by CPC to a recommendation by a planning officer to grant an application would automatically result in the application being referred to the East Area Planning Sub-Committee (EAS-C).
Different rules apply to:
- Major applications for 10+ dwellings, which do not normally arise in Claygate, though Land North of Raleigh Drive is an exception;
- Minor applications for 1-9 dwellings, infrequent in Claygate;
- Householder applications for changes or additions to an existing dwelling^[1], the great majority of those with which CPC deals;
- Permission in Principle (PiP), a scheme introduced in 2017 allowing a developer to apply for agreement that land is in principle suitable for building dwellings, of which there has so far only been one in Claygate (2018/2847); the developer still needs planning permission (‘technical details consent’) for the particular dwellings it wishes to build.
Section 1 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 provides that “the council of a district is the district planning authority for the district”, so that Elmbridge Borough Council (EBC) is the local planning authority. The Act does not regulate the internal procedure for Councils to exercise their functions. In all councils the majority of decisions are delegated to planning officers, but different councils do things differently.
In Elmbridge, until 2019 in the case of Major, Minor and Householder applications, if there was an objection from 15 or more households or (in Claygate) from CPC, a recommendation by the planning officer to grant an application was automatically referred to the relevant sub-committee (in the case of major applications, to the Planning Committee). A comparison of Surrey district councils in 2018 found that Elmbridge delegated only 92% of decisions, one of the lowest in Surrey, resulting in 152 out of 1,904 decisions having to go to committees. In Guildford, the only other district council with a comparable number of decisions, 97% were delegated, with only 59 out of 1962 decided by the Planning Committee. In Epsom & Ewell only 25 applications were decided by the Planning Committee. Waverley, the only other council which then operated a planning sub-committee structure, was comparable to Elmbridge (137 out of 1712, 92%).
Elmbridge officials put a paper to the EBC Planning Committee on 23 July 2019 suggesting a change of procedure. They pointed out that the proportion of decisions taken in the agreed time was lower in Elmbridge than in any other district council in Surrey. Much of the delay, and the extra work involved, was due to objections from 15+ households or the CPC resulting in automatic referrals to a sub-committee. Without consulting CPC, they proposed that this option should be deleted; for the future, a householder application would go to a sub-committee only if referred by a ward councillor. An objection by 15+ households or by CPC would be ineffective. This was agreed by the Planning Committee. They also agreed an amendment to add that PiP applications to which there were 15+ objections should be referred to a sub-committee. No reference was made to objections by CPC; this was apparently an oversight.
This change had to await an amendment to the EBC Constitution, since delegation of decisions is a constitutional matter. The Constitution was duly amended, and the new scheme of delegation came into force on 1 September 2019. This was not immediately apparent. For over a year EBC planning officers did not operate their own revised scheme, but continued to refer householder applications to which CPC had objected to EAS-C. An update report by Paul Falconer in December 2020 suggested that this was still the correct procedure. It was only during 2021 that it became clear that householder applications to which CPC objected were no longer being referred to EAS-C.
In April 2022 I put to CPC Planning Committee a paper explaining these developments. I explained that references by CPC in the case of PiPs had been omitted by oversight, and also that three EBC papers erroneously described minor applications as “2-9” dwellings rather than “1-9” dwellings suggesting, wrongly, that an application for one new dwelling was a householder application. The Committee agreed with me that I should take these matters up with Kim Tagliarini, then Head of Planning, and after a lengthy exchange of emails she agreed that these were mistakes. In the 2023 version of the EBC Constitution they have been corrected.
It therefore remains the case that householder applications will only be decided by EAS-C if referred by a ward councillor or if they are on behalf of members, the council or officers of the council; otherwise, even if there are objections from 15+ households, or from CPC, the application will still be decided by a planning officer. This is entirely in accordance with the law. The only obligation of EBC towards CPC is that “in determining the application the authority must take into account any representations received from the council of the parish.”^[2] Anything further is a concession by EBC which they are entitled to withdraw, and which they have withdrawn to ensure that fewer applications are referred to sub-committees.
The concession that 15+ objections to householder applications should be referred to a sub-committee applies to the whole borough, and I do not suggest that we should seek to have that reinstated. We could however seek to have the previous procedure restored for CPC, though we would have to accept that this should be used only in the most serious cases. There would be nothing to prevent CPC from objecting to an application but still let it be determined by a planning officer.
My recommendation to the Planning Committee, for discussion on 15 August 2024, is that we should put on the agenda of our next meeting with EBC a request that, in future, any objection by CPC to a householder application in Claygate should, not automatically but if CPC specifically so requests, be referred to EAS-C for determination.

Michael Collon

23 July 2024

Footnotes

[1]: 'householder application’ means:
- (a) an application for planning permission for development for an existing dwellinghouse, or development within the curtilage of such a dwellinghouse for any purpose incidental to the enjoyment of the dwellinghouse, or
- (b) an application for any consent, agreement or approval required by or under a planning permission, development order or local development order in relation to such development, but does not include an application for change of use or an application to change the number of dwellings in a building.
(The Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015, SI 2015/595, article 2(1), https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/595/article/2 )
[2]: Ibid. Article 25(2) https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/595/article/25

Appendix 3: APPLICATIONS DECIDED, APPEALS LODGED & DECIDED

APPLICATIONS DECIDED

week ending 19th July

ADDRESS: Athena House 16A Stevens Lane

APPLICATION NUMBER: 2024/0582

PROPOSAL: Rear dormer window to provide rooms in the roofspace and single storey rear extension.

CPC VERDICT: No Comments.

EBC VERDICT: Grant Lawful Development Cert - Proposed

Anonymous

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Planning Committee 15th August 2024 Agenda

Covid 19

AGENDA

Appendix 1: ACTIONS from the CPC Planning Meeting of 18th July to be discussed at the meeting of 15th August

Appendix 2: Claygate Parish Council: Objections to Planning Decisions

Footnotes

Appendix 3: APPLICATIONS DECIDED, APPEALS LODGED & DECIDED

APPLICATIONS DECIDED

week ending 19th July

week ending 26th July

week ending 2nd August

week ending 9th August

Appendix 4: PLANNING APPLICATIONS

week ending 19th July

week ending 26th July

week ending 2nd August

week ending 9th August

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