Agenda item

A report on the work of the Planning and Building Control services to December 2023.

Rob Krzyszowski introduced the report on the work of the Planning and Building Control services to December 2023.

The following was noted in response to questions from the committee:

Cross Cutting Matters:

• The government would be looking in more detail at where Councils were frequently refusing proposals against officer advice. They would be looking to publish that data more so that local communities and residents could see.
• On the planning skills delivery fund, officers did initially suggest further agency staff to help deal with tackling the backlog of applications. So far, the backlog had been manageable with existing staff, through overtime measures and there was agency staff already within the team. So in reality, there was a blended approach.
• The National Development Management Policies will be a new addition to the planning system. This entailed the Local Plan, the London Plan and the new National Development Management Policies all being the development plan. Planning applications must be determined in accordance with the development plan, in turn this would strengthen them. The National Planning Policy Framework was not the development plan, currently this was just a material consideration. Officers had not seen any drafted National Development Management Policies yet; this would need to be consulted on first. Officers would likely respond to this as a Council.
• Older peoples housing would be picked up in the Local Plan. To clarify, the Government ordered a review into the London Plan. That review had been published and does not suggest any changes to the London Plan. Since this, the Government have announced a national brownfield first policy. This reiterated building on brownfield first rather than greenfield sites. This had been long established national planning policy for many years.
• There was a small amount of Green Belt in Haringey, but officers would still keep an open-minded approach for those types of sites and apply planning policy.
• When the housing delivery test figure was not as good as it was now, there was something called the presumption in favour of sustainable development. This was an extra national policy nudge to make it slightly more difficult to refuse planning applications for housing. The nudge was only in national policy, it was not in the development plan. The development plan was still the most important document; therefore, this was just a material consideration. It would not make much difference in practice and particularly in Haringey where most of the sites were brownfield. The principle of development was generally accepted through the local plan and planning policy, so it was a slightly nuanced technical policy issue.

Development Management and Enforcement:

• In terms of the appeals, the council had received a batch of telephone box replacements. These were generally received quite negatively, there had been a lot of issues with clutter in the pavement and some of them caused anti-social behaviour. A tough stance had been taken on these and unfortunately a batch of appeals on this was lost. The 10% loss of appeals included enforcement and adverts which were a separate category.
• EOTS had been used more wider than usual, the Government had encouraged that as part of the planning skills delivery fund; to make sure that officers agreed deadlines. It was common that services with the highest performance figures would have the highest refusal rates, this was not something that the people of Haringey wanted. There would have to be a judgement call and officers would be very focused on that.
• In terms of the backlog, the overall number the team had been targeting was just over 200 and roughly 100 of those had been delivered. There had been a slight increase in other things joining that list, the outstanding list was now about 130. Good progress was being made in a short period of time; the team had kept April as a target to have most of it done with May as a fallback position.

Building Control:

• Cllr Bevan requested that cabinet members should get involved in the creation of job profiles.
• There was something called over sailing licences, this was where a licence would be given for a crane to go over other people's property. This sits outside of the Planning system and Building Control system.
• A number of trainees have been recruited, paid for by the professional body, a couple hadn’t worked out, however the remaining new trainee is working well within the team.
• The Chair and Committee thanked Bob McIver, Head of Building Control, for 44 years of service at Haringey Council.

RESOLVED

That this report be noted.