Agenda item

A report on the work of the Planning and Building Control services from January to March 2025.

Rob Krzyszowski introduced the report as set out in the agenda pack.

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

• Most proposals regarding reform of Planning Committees that the Government suggested were already in place in Haringey; so, in a sense these wouldn’t make too much difference in the borough. The big decisions for major applications would still come to planning committee for a thorough debate.
• In terms of the tiers, the paper that the government were consulting on was for local planning authorities to feedback on. Anyone, including councillors, could go onto the website, read the paper and make comments.
• There was emerging work occurring on local fee setting and the government would be publishing guidance on how the borough should do this to make sure it would only be about cost recovery; it was not about making extra ‘profit’ or surplus for a council.
• A Member noted that the Theatres Trust as a statutory consultee was important in London
• One of the consultations is about setting a small, medium and large designation for planning applications, which was different to how it was at the moment.
• On the fees and whether they could cover things such as planning aid or design competitions. Officers did not think design competitions would be appropriate, but, potentially yes to something like Planning Aid, which assisted with community engagement. It could be argued that community engagement was a fundamental part of the planning application process.
• The previous consultation in December spoke about having unelected professionals on committee having a vote, however, this was no longer being proposed.
• A Member noted they would like to see more accountability for individual councillors across the country who repeatedly voted for politically motivated reasons.
• In regard to strategic master planning and tenure diversity, this was largely about getting smaller and medium house builders into the market and delivering housing because at the moment it was dominated by the larger house builders. Strategic master planning would mean there would be a big site broken up into different developers. The challenge around lots of small and medium developers on a single site would be with the levels of affordability, when there is a smaller builder they may be less likely to deliver the optimum number of affordable homes, whereas, a possible upside of the bigger house builders may be an increased likelihood to get more affordability.
• In terms of time frames of the reforms, some of it was linked to the planning and infrastructure bill passing through parliament. If all goes smoothly, that will go through parliament and get royal assent towards the end of this year/ early next year and then there would need to be secondary legislation as well.
• In terms of getting the level of documentation right for a planning application, officers asked for high standards from developers. Over the years, planning had seeped into other areas. One example of this was building fire safety, which used to be kept separate in building regulations. Now there was a bit of an overlap across the two, and whether that was the right balance or not was up for debate.
• Regarding the Planning Committee reforms, the next stage would be to discuss this with Councillor Williams as Cabinet Member and feedback to her what officer views were on the reform proposals and what members views were as well. Then she could decide if she would like us to do a formal consultation response on behalf of the Council.

Development Management and Planning Enforcement –

Catherine Smyth, introduced the report as set out in the agenda pack.

• The service was congratulated for the recent Secure by Design award given to the Council by the Metropolitan Police.
• Most of the increases related to HMO referrals were from colleagues in private sector housing / licensing. Colleagues were picking up the fact that some HMOs, when they were looking for a licence, did not have planning permission. This would then be passed onto planning officers, and this was where the big increase had come from. Officers were asked to provide information on the number of retrospective planning applications for HMOs received over the last 3 years.
• Officers had successfully removed 5 telephone boxes, but this project was still ongoing. Officers were asked to send more detailed information following the meeting.

Spatial Planning –

Bryce Tudball, Head of Spatial Planning, introduced the report as set out in the agenda pack.

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

• The Local Plan is scheduled to go to Cabinet on the 16th of September and there would be a call-in period afterwards, so officers would have to wait for that to elapse before starting consultation. Officers were already working on the consultation materials, so there would not be a long gap between the cabinet decision and then starting a consultation. Officers wanted to get that completed and finished before Christmas and there would also be a consultation on the spend of neighbourhood CIL monies accrued.
• The service was congratulated for the recent national award for the digital Infrastructure Delivery Plan. Officers were asked to share detailed information regarding the awards.
• There was not a dedicated local plan budget however officers had secured money from various places. This enabled officers to bring in another experienced planner for a period of 18 months and officers were also looking to bring in an additional assistant planner.

Building Control –

Denis Ioannou introduced the report as set out in the agenda pack.

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

• On the vacancy rate, there was above 70% vacancy in the building control structure which has an impact on what the team can deliver, including the out of hours cover. Officers had completed a very extensive recruitment campaign over the last couple of months to fill as many posts as possible ranging from the registered building inspector level up to the lead team manager and head of service level.
• The issue was that building control was a specialist field and to become a registered building inspector, you would have to take a certain set of interviews/exams.

RESOLVED

That the report be noted.