Transcript

Thank you, we are now live. Thank you, Vince. And just to say welcome to everyone here tonight or joining virtually or watching via the Council's webcast. And the first item is apologies for absence. Thank you, we have one apology this evening from Councillor Jones and I understand that it's Councillor Grey who is substituting. We also have Councillor Duggan who is a member of the committee. She is online so therefore won't be able to vote. Thank you. Thanks, Vince. Any declarations of interest? No, okay, none of those. And the next thing is to look at the minutes of the meeting held on 21st of March 2024. Can we agree those? Thank you. And then the minutes of the meeting held on the 23rd of May 2024. Can we agree those? Thank you. Questions submitted understanding order 30. Are there any, Vince? There are no questions, chairman. Okay, thank you. So the first really substantive item is the 2023/24 budget out-term report. And I have started with the budget because I wanted to highlight how tight the budget is so that all Councillors because I know there's a few Councillors that are new to this committee which I should have welcomed so apologies that I didn't. I just wanted everyone to be aware of the very difficult and tight financial situation. And it's not just tight regarding the new local plan and the money for that is a fraction of what we spent on the other local plan that we don't mention anymore. But also for planning appeals. And I just wanted to say that at the start. And then I'll go over to Director of Resources Mark Hacksanders for the report. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, chairman. Good evening, members. So the report sets out the 23/24 full year financial out-term position for the Planning Policy Committee which is an overspend of 404,000 for the year overall. And whilst that's 129K improvement from quarter three as Catherine -- Councillor Sayer was pointing out it's still a very difficult financial position for the committee. I'll take the report as read but draw your attention to the 190K variance against the appeals budget. For 23/24 the year covered by the report the appeals budget was set at 80K and that in itself was a doubling from 40K in the previous financial year. The year end position against the appeals budget was a total spend of 270K and this causes the 190K variance. Just wanted to flag with members that the budget for that has increased to 200K for 24/25 but I think there are significant concerns that the full cost of appeals and other legal costs relating to planning might be significantly higher than that. And the council is looking to set aside funding to mitigate that risk wherever possible. The report also sets out a small use of earmarked reserves for neighbourhood plans and for planning policy matters. That's set out on page 19 of the agenda pack. And finally the report sets out a reduction in expected community infrastructure levy payments against the capital programme of 182K. And that amount will be rolled forward for community infrastructure levy in future years. Just to say on that, that's a change to the timing of sill payments rather than a reduction in the overall cost. That money is ring fenced for sill schemes and will be rolled forward. Like I said, I'll take the report as read but I'm very happy to take questions on anything within it. Thank you, Chair. Any questions? Just looking at the, I guess one of the challenges we have is around staffing, planning office, in the planning team, enforcement. I see we've overspent on consultancies and salaries related to that. I just wanted to understand, and excuse me because I'm new to this, what the plan is for recruitment and if there's someone who's taking a lead on addressing these challenges to get that budget down. I can answer in general terms as much as the council is focusing very closely on recruitment matters to try and reduce our reliance on interim spend. And there was an update at the last full council on the measures we're taking on that. And it is a critical part of the council's plans in future. I think probably Taran is better placed to talk about the plans specific to planning policy committee, but also just to give members some assurance that the, I think the budget plans for 24/25 have made an assumption that at least some of our staff are likely to be interim on a fairly ongoing basis. So it's not a problem that we'll ever be able to 100% solve. Thanks, Taran. Yeah, so you're absolutely right. We're very reliant on interims across the planning services, both in development management and also in the planning policy team. We've been working really hard and had quite a lot of success in the development management side of things, particularly in our lower grade posts, bringing in permanent staff. So it's at a more senior level at the moment that we have a number of interims. We're working, we're doing quite a lot of things, as Mark said, across recruitment anyhow to ensure that we are sort of benchmarking and providing salaries that sort of meet at least our sorry neighbors. Planning is a really competitive area, very, very competitive. And some roles in particular, like enforcement that you just mentioned, very difficult to get enforcement officers. In actual fact, if you read any planning press, you see again and again, some authorities have no enforcement officers whatsoever, and many are in the same position as us where they are reliant on interims. Saying that, we're not giving up. We're going to go out very shortly for some permanent recruitment enforcement. We have a senior planning policy officer role out at the moment. We've been doing things like welcome payments and again, like you know, working really hard to be a bit slicker in how we do recruitment. But there's certainly more that we can do in that area. The one thing that I would just say is particularly in development management, I think we want to keep potentially some flexibility. Case loads have been coming down recently, which is really, really good news. So from a budget perspective, we may want to keep some flexibility in there around recruitment and potentially a slight reliance on interims. Just follow-up question. Can you elaborate on what the challenges are? Is it financial? Is it to do with working conditions, compensation? Do you understand the challenges with recruitment in that respect? I mean, I think just generally, the private sector pay a lot more for planners. Not just planning, also building control and other areas, professions within the council. So we compete with the private sector. We also compete amongst authorities. And it's a bit of a vicious cycle. If we all add a few grand on to the jobs, the jobs go up and up. So I think we are pretty equitable in terms of our working conditions, hybrid, things like that. But yeah, I mean, it's compensation. It's case loads. What are you coming into? What will you deal with? Career progression, that kind of thing. So the other thing we're really working on is growing our own. We need to bring more people into planning. So bringing more people in that entry level and then seeing how we can keep people by getting them qualified and giving them career opportunities to stay here at Tandridge. I mean, I think the other thing, and we got an enforcement discussion later tonight, but I think the other thing, and we're going to have to look at some different ways of doing things. I don't know if we need to look at bailiffs. Femi Nwanzi, the deputy DM manager, she was telling us that in her old authority, they had a company that they employed on an ad hoc basis to cover out of hours, so you pay a certain sum for them when you need them. So we're going to have to look at all of those options as well, because I'm sure you know there's been the most appalling episode in this district a couple of weeks ago. And we can't have those sorts of things not dealt with firmly, I think. Sorry, Councillor Spencer, were you going to say something else? Yeah, sorry. No, I totally agree, and I think picking up on that was mentioned at the working group. For me, just from my perspective, is that we need to have our own line and share of our own team at the council so we can grow that out. And that's what I'm hearing, and that's great. From my perspective, it seems like we're about to start a new local plan. We need the expertise in-house, and it's overreliance on contractors. Short-term staff seems problematic. I wanted just to understand by asking about why we're not getting the staff is do we have someone actually leading the recruitment internally, or are we contracting that out? Does someone understand the culture of the council and able to sell the council if pay isn't just the challenge? I guess is there someone leading it from within the resourcing team, an HR person, a dedicated recruiter with that kind of skillset? Just for context, we've got quite a small HR team, and we are looking at why people want to come and work for Tandridge District Council, both in terms of surveying our own staff to discover what attracted them here, and a wider review of what makes Tandridge District Council an attractive place to come and work, and that's a review that will benchmark ourselves against other similar employees. We have limitations in terms of what we can do internally on that, so we are bringing in expert external resource to help us with that understanding of why would someone want to come here, what attracts people here, and what we need to do to make sure candidates are attracted to come here. In terms of leading the recruitments internally, that's largely led by the managers themselves with support from HR, but again, I think we need some external support on that as well. So it's a balance to be struck with people that know the council, they know what motivates them to work here, and that's really useful to bring to the discussion, but we also need people who are experts in the market for planning jobs and other jobs, so a mixture of support. Our own resource at present is fairly limited on that, but we are trying to resolve that issue as well. Okay, thank you. Just to say, Councillor Spencer, I think you've really hit the nail on the head there, because it's something I think we have to, and I think we've got an agreement that we will change our whole way of advertising, because it's always been about what you can do for us, what we want in a planning officer or what we want in enforcement officer, and the market dictates we have to turn that around, and it's what we can do for you, and we did try and have, I don't know how successful it's been a few weeks ago, doing just that and saying, you know, how great Tandridge is, why not come here, you know, why not come and live here, you've got great schools, you've got this, you've got that. I don't know if that's been any more successful, but I'm absolutely sure that is the way to go, rather than demanding all these qualifications that, you know, and this, that and the other, and experience, because we just won't get anybody, because it's too competitive. Anyway, thank you for that. I agree. Councillor Gray. I just, I couldn't resist picking up just on one thing that Taryn said, which completely correctly pointed out that we are competing with other local authorities, et cetera. I just wonder, I know this is, I don't want to open too much for can of worms, and I know this comes around from time to time, but what scope is there for us to really know what's going on in our immediately neighbouring authorities, like Rygate and Bancetid, like Mole Valley, and what potential is there actually on, say, for example, enforcement staff, for working together with them in the recruitment of staff? Yeah, so, I mean, key for me is bringing more planners into the market, because otherwise we're constantly fighting amongst ourselves, which isn't helpful. We absolutely, we were speaking to Rygate and Bancetid actually on Monday, actually talking about out of hours and how we could support each other more with the sort of incidents that happened a few weeks ago, because I know that in Rygate and Bancetid on the border as well that they suffer too. So we do constantly sort of talk amongst our peers, and, you know, there is a planning officers group across Surrey and more generally. We also do quite a lot of benchmarking as well. We've done benchmarking within planning. I couldn't, the most recent, actually, area we've done benchmarking is actually building control, and I know that because I've got the results on my desk at the moment, to check and balance, you know, are we out, are we in the middle of the group, you know, sometimes some authorities have bigger allowances but a slightly lower baseline on salary and that kind of thing. But it is very difficult to continue to be competitive if we are constantly stealing from each other from the same call of individuals, and that's not helpful. So as much as having great teams, good quality and permanent staff, I think growing our own has to go alongside that as much as we can and attracting people and saying, you know, work in public, in local government is a great place to work and trying to, you know, trying to make the most of that as well. Councillor Steedes. Yeah, not to lay with the point, but we are also competing with the county councils as well as district and boroughs, and we have exactly the same problem at Surrey, and exactly what Mark was saying, it has to be a different approach to the way that we do the advertisements, but we have, it's everywhere, the shortage of staff for councils, and the price is going up all the time because the counties are also competing with us. So it isn't just here, it's everywhere. Thank you. And maybe it's looking at different places to get recruit from, because one of our councils, Councillor Smith, is an ex-police officer, and he was saying quite a few police officers, they retire early, they could do something like this. I mean, they'd obviously have to work up to a planning qualification or be able to serve the notices, but they could do some of that type of job and maybe be trained into doing the rest of it, because that's the only way we're going to get new pools of expertise, I think. Yeah, I would agree with that. I think just leaning on the expertise, I do recruitment, partly I'm not a recruiter, but I recruit IT professionals for a living, and I find that obviously there's a money aspect to it, that's important to everyone, but it's, if we're competing, we need to be offering more, and I think that's where someone who's a specialist recruiter will help, and that's where I'd see that expertise to kind of pull those ideas together, using the benchmarked information. But I think, yeah, we'd have to be doing more, appreciate there's a shortage, but we've got to be the ones that are at the top of the queue. People want to work here, we need to understand how we get to that position, if we're not there already. I think another real sticking point seems to be this out of hours, so we're going to have to find a way to address that, and we can maybe do that on an ad hoc basis, as was mentioned. Are there any other questions? If not, are we okay to agree the recommendation, to note the revenue and capital out-term permission positions as per recommendation on page 11? Okay, thank you. So the next one is the planning performance report, and as you can see, I think we're doing pretty well when measured against the Government's required performance levels, and there is a continued improvement and the backlog reducing, so I'm going to ask Tom James, who's the interim DM manager, to run through the report. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Yes, this report covers quarter four of the 2023/2024 period, which is January to March this year. The report is generally split into two sections. The first section deals with performance, and the second section deals with caseloads and commentary on appeals. The first thing to highlight is the statistics collected by the Government via DLUC is based on two matrices. One is on the speed of decision-making, and the other is on the quality of decision-making. The speed of decision-making is quite straightforward, it's how many applications you determine within the agreed timeframes, and the quality of decision-making is slightly a bit more complicated. It's based on the number of appeals allowed against the total number of applications you have determined. With regards to both of these indices, I draw your attention to the tables on page 25. You probably noticed a slight discrepancy between the figures in the top table and the smaller table. I've rechecked the figures into the bottom table, which is the accurate one. In the quarter, we determined eight major applications as detailed in the table, seven of these were in time, which results in 88% were decided within an agreed timeframe or within an extension of time. For minor applications, 64 were decided within time out of 75, which was 85% performance. And on the other types of applications, which are generally mainly your householders and adverts, 144 were determined in time out of 158, which is 91%. So cumulatively, out of the 241 decisions issued in quarter 4, 89% were in time, which is a really good performance by the team. These are above the DLUC requirement performance figures. If you turn over the page, this gives some commentary on the quality of decisions. There are two matrices. This time, the criteria is based on major applications and minor and other applications joined together. And with regards to the what are called major applications, the Council had 8.3% of appeals allowed on a rolling two-year period. With regards to non-majors, which is the minors and others combined, our later performance figure shows 2% of these were allowed as appealed. Both of these are well within the 10% threshold, which the Government uses in order to determine whether councils should go into any kind of designation at all. So in all respects, I think the Council is improving their performance in the last quarter. The second part of the report is based on backlog and on appeals performance. If you turn over to page 27, you will see a table and it's a snapshot between each given time period. On the 22nd June last year, 3 August, 5 January and 24 May, it shows you various types of measures and in most instances, it's all heading in the right direction in terms of trends, in terms of backlog, number of applications outstanding and caseloads as well. If we turn over the page to 28, there's some commentary on appeals performance. During the quarter, there was 29 appeals determined by the planning spectra, of which seven were allowed and 22 were dismissed. So this results in 76% of appeals being dismissed, which is well above the general target of 65%. Enforcement appeals, two decisions were issued of which both were allowed and none were dismissed. Taken as a whole though, with regards to the planning and enforcement appeals, 71% of the appeals were dismissed, which is 22 out of the 31. We received 17 new appeals during the quarter and three planning appeals during the quarter and three enforcement appeals. With regards to general outcome and decision making by the planning spectra, they are generally supportive of the council's policies on character, design, green belt and neighbourhood plans. These are the supporters for the committee to note. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thanks, Tom. Any questions? Councillor Steedes? Could we go back to the enforcement appeals, please? The two decisions that were on our side, how long were those enforcement items going? How long were they there? Two years before we could get the appeal decision made? Do we know? Because obviously we have got this problem at the moment, with the length of time that enforcements are being made. Please. Thank you. I wouldn't have those figures to date. These are just headline figures. I can certainly provide those figures to you outside of the meeting tomorrow morning. Could you let me know which ones those are, please? Yes. Thank you. Councillor Lockwood? Right. So I first of all would like to make a comment in this position that I heard about the performance of the council in terms of planning appeals. When I was last sitting here in the chamber in the Planning Policy Committee, it's very different to the view I have now. I would like to absolutely commend our officers for the absolutely fantastic work they have done, particularly on planning appeals, because they have pulled Tandridge off the bottom of that country's ranking in terms of appeal for performance. It has been quite staggering, the transformation over the last two years when you look at it. The performance in terms of the planning application handling, it's been transformational in terms of the time it's taken for someone to submit an application and actually get a result, being within time. It has made such a difference to our reputation locally and I'm hoping nationally. I think the delays in the appeals are nothing to do with Tandridge. The Planning Inspectorate are renowned at the moment for having a huge time lag. And I think those two enforcement appeals, we're talking about applications or enforcement notices that were issued in 2021, those particular two. The two enforcement notices that were decided this week, I know they were originally issued in 2021, I think. The Norrie Bright ones until Worcester Hill were results this week. So, the concern I have sort of going forward is the position that the council are in in terms of the speculative applications, particularly on the Greenbelt sites and the speed in which developers go to appeal and also some of these speculative applications which are causing quite a lot of trouble for the council and enforcement issues that are causing trouble for the council. I know of one enforcement case which they wanted for it to be an inquiry and it's actually quite a modest application, quite a modest enforcement notice. But to put the council on the spot and get the agreement of the Planning Inspectorate to have it as a public inquiry puts a huge financial burden on the council and actually the council are doing incredibly well at the moment. And I would like to put praise where praise is due. Thanks. Thanks, Councillor Lockwood. Just I totally agree about the appeals and the big ones are being fast tracked. They seem almost automatically to go to inquiry. I don't know, Tom might know different. And I was looking in the planning press at Wealden's bill, I don't know if you saw it, £750,000 in one year on appeals. So it's really quite staggering but we have to fight them because I guess if you fight and you win, there's less pressure, hopefully. Sorry, Tom, did you want to say anything on that? Nothing specific. Generally the inspector is taken for enforcement appeals, they're taken well over a year for them to be heard. So that isn't anything to do with the planning authorities, it's just the Planning Inspectorate with their issues, resourcing, a number of appeals that are coming forward. Just one comment I'd like to make on our performance generally in terms of recruitment, because we are performing well nationally and caseloads are down. The reputation that we have as a local planning authority is increasing amongst our other local authorities. I've just recently come from Wokingborough Council and I know officers there, we're now looking for new work there, but they are very conscious about caseloads to each authority because planning is a very small world and news does get out about caseloads and how high caseloads are in each authority. I can't take any responsibility because I've only just joined a council, so this is our predecessor and the team has worked really hard in increasing performance and reducing the backlog, which has bode well for our reputation amongst other authorities in attracting staff. Yeah, I brought some figures along because I thought somebody might ask about caseloads and the latest figures. The biggest caseload for one person is 50 and then after that you go to 46, 36, 29, 35, so much, much reduced on where they were. Councillor Gray. I wanted to agree with Liz in the praise that she gave to officers over our performance. The small point I wanted to make, there's language around the quality of decisions linked to our appeal performance and I don't think we should, there's obviously there's validity in that, but I don't think we should move to a position where we're scared to make decisions because of the possible outcome at appeal. In some ways I think what might frighten us more if we were having costs awarded to the appellant and against us and that, you know, and that aspect isn't reported. I mean, to what extent are we having costs awarded against us? Anecdotally we're generally quite successful in defending cost claims. Obviously you've only been here since April myself, I don't know historically how we've been doing with regards to costs being awarded against us. That's something that we could look to report, the number of costs allowed against us as a local authority versus how many actually people have applied for costs. That's something that we can include in future reports, but generally I think we're doing quite well in defending any cost claims against us. I think that too, but I think that would be helpful because I think if you want to start attaching language to do with the quality of decisions to the whole business of what appeals get dismissed and what get allowed, then where we have costs awarded against us, that is more indicative of perhaps negligence or not, you know, substandard decisions. The cost regime is based on whether the local authority acted unreasonably as opposed to the standard decision. The quality of decision-making matrices is dictated by the local central government. There's nothing that we can do and it is, there's been lots of arguments in the planning profession about whether that is an appropriate measurement to have in place a number of appeals allowed against a number of applications. But I'll take your point in terms of the costs and something that we can look to introduce. Yeah, if you've got time that would be good. I think we should also say how many applications for costs there are because there are a lot from what I can see. And so a lot of them are defeated. I think that's quite an important metric in this to see how many people are asking for costs and how many didn't get them. Councillor Lockwood. I just wanted to come back again on that and to heap some more praise on our officers because actually when I do follow the appeals results, particularly for Tandridge on a weekly basis, and when you go back and read the application documents and the appeal documents, some of the officers submissions to the appeal, especially the responses to the requests for costs, some of those reports are absolutely superb. And I have tried to tell those officers personally just how good they are. But the quality of work that the officers are putting in those appeal documents is fantastic. It's particularly noticeable where the appeal costs have been dismissed. Thank you. Councillor Proulx. Just as a subset in terms of statistics related to planning appeals and appeals allowed subsequently, do we have a number, and I suspect it's very small, of appeals upheld where the planning committee has gone against the recommendation of the council officers and that has subsequently gone to appeal and been upheld. It will be an interesting statistic, more related obviously to the performance of the planning committee. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairman. We don't have that information to hand, but again that is something that we can provide and I think it will be quite interesting to have that information to hand. It's an exercise which I undertook at my previous authority. So it's just a question of seeing who the decision maker was, was I at committee level or officer level, what the original recommendation is and then looking at the appeal decision. Given the number of applications that go to committee, which is quite few, there's probably going to be quite a small base, but that is something which I can look into and I think it would be a worthwhile exercise to do. Yes, I think it would be very interesting for the members of the planning committee in particular to see. Thank you. Councillor Allen. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and I was going to ask for the caseload, so thank you for bringing it. I think everything has been said now. What are we actually learning from all these facts and figures? Do we rate our permissions or refusals against what the inspectors are saying? Do we actually know when we send it, when we refuse it, do we actually know what they've been doing in the past that might match this particular planning application? I'm presuming some of them range from frivolous to very, very close to the marks. What are we learning between those two points? Are you talking about benchmarking the inspectorate as to whether -- well, I mean, you can only just compare the decisions that come out. I don't know if Tom has much more experience than me in that. They do vary, don't they, Tom, you know, because it's a matter of judgement planning, some of it. Once you get away from the technical side of planning, it is a matter of judgement. And I'm not quite sure, comparing with what are the two points, can I just -- Well, I accept your point of judgement, but they have to go on facts and figures and MPPS and things like that. So I was just wondering, we should be able to gauge that, should we not, against what their response is to an appeal is when they turn it down. Our response to a bill, when they allow it, we must be able to say to ourselves we can't be doing that again because it costs us 300,000 pounds or something like that. Yeah, absolutely. There are -- the planning history which includes any appeals on a particular site is a relevant planning material consideration and that is taken into account when any future applications are determined on a particular site. Where there is more strategic decisions are being made on a particular large-scale applications, we do need to have due regard to that, particularly if the appeal is heard by way of a public inquiry because that's where you get expert witnesses being cross-examined by an inspector, by council, by barristers. So those kind of appeals give a little bit more weight and the findings of what an inspector says could have an implication further afield. There are material considerations and you give that the appropriate weight. All appeal decisions are circulated amongst a team and I encourage all officers within a team to read the appeal decisions, including the ones which are not theirs, because that's a good learning exercise just to see what an inspector says. You do get some -- excuse my terminology -- batty inspector decisions and you need to have a look at those and see whether they are sound themselves or whether -- and you also see whether there's a trend as well between inspectors in allowing or dismissing certain types of appeals. It's also good to see which of your policies stand up. See if you've got good policies which are regularly supported by inspectors and then you know you've got sound policies and that's why I highlighted at the end of my introduction there are inspectors are generally very supportive of the council policies on character design, green belt and importantly neighbourhood plans as well. So it means that we in terms of a decision maker and policy making are doing something right. I'll just be really brief. Just going back to our performance, I mean everybody that was here two years ago will remember the dreadful problem that we had with CIVICA. It was about this time two years ago that it started and it meant basically that no -- hardly any planning applications could be decided and worked about three or four months to get that sorted out. That is the problem with what we have with the backlog and it has taken a long time. You know we're two years down the road but I have to say that we are in a really good position now with DiEM. I'm really proud actually of what they've achieved and you know successive people have come in and Tom you know it's brilliant having you here. You seem to have settled in amazingly and you're doing a great job. So I think we're in an amazing position. I would have to say that I'm very proud of everybody that's got us to this point because at some points we didn't think we were going to ever get here. So it's great. Anyway it's really a good news story I think for us. Thank you. It's having the confidence to know that you know we're not hopefully going to fail the government's performance statistics so we're not going to have our planning powers taken away because it's fairly dire consequences if you do for -- I mean not everybody gets that happening to them but I think recently there's been three or four extra authorities that have had that happen to them and they've gone into special measures and that really would be well from my point of view a disaster. So it's very comforting that we're not near that at the moment. Are there any other questions? So is it all right to agree or to note the Court for KPIs as per the recommendation on page 23? Thank you. The next thing is the local development scheme. Now because we've withdrawn the local plan the Council is legally required to produce a new local development scheme and basically this is a sort of rolling project plan for the production of documents and plans and policies that form part of the local development framework. As you know there may be big changes to planning policy depending on the election results. I saw on Tuesday or I heard on Tuesday the shadow Chancellor speaking on Radio 4 she gave an interview saying that if elected Labour would in its first 100 days of government update the national planning policy framework. So I just want to stress that all the dates, timetables in this paper are highly indicative only because it may all go out the window. Is that fair enough Katja? And I'm just going to Katja Fox, planning policy specialist to go through the report. Thank you. Thanks Catherine. I think you've preempted my first warning which was to say we've done our absolute best but as Catherine's highlighted it is a time of great uncertainty for planning and plan making. Obviously we've got the general election on the horizon and there are lots of proposals out there which could affect what we do but also currently we're halfway through implementing the changes due to the levelling up and regeneration act and so we're not sure where the timetable is going on that front or if it will go anywhere depending on whether we have a change of government or not. So what we've tried to do is be very proactive in creating the timetable and set out something that meets the current requirements but can be easily adapted if the lurer gets fully enacted but equally we're focusing on activities where we're pretty confident they're unlikely to change things. So focusing on sort of evidence-based studies which are key and people are very unlikely to change even if they change the system and introduce a new MPPF. So we've tried to future-proof it from that perspective. I'd also say and highlight as we have in the report that there are obviously quite a lot of risks associated with producing a local plan. I think we're only too aware of all of those. So we've tried to sort of look back at what happened previously and experience elsewhere and identify what those risks are and set out an appropriate mitigation strategy to try and avoid some of those pitfalls going forward. And so we have tried to set out what we think is a realistic, I will say is quite tight program so there's not much room for massive changes of direction but we are hopefully working towards a submission target of quarter three 2026/27. So that's where we're going to leave it and we're looking for tonight to use of say recommend that the scheme be adopted. So over to you if you have any questions. No questions. In which case we happy to agree to adopt the local development scheme as per the recommendation on page 31. Thank you. So the next one, the housing delivery test action plan and that's another document that the council is legally required to produce. It's an annual measurement of housing delivery and where that delivery is below a specified level there needs to be an action plan setting out how that delivery will be increased which is what we're doing now. Now I hope you're just going to bear with me before we go to catch a because I want to emphasise two things. And the first thing is housing delivery in this district has increased dramatically with permissions being given for hundreds of new homes as I think we all know. This is not properly reflected in this report before you tonight as we cannot yet include several major permissions because although this authority has granted planning permission for them the section 106 agreements have not yet been finalised and until they are these developments cannot be counted in the figures. And the council will be producing a new statement updating its five year housing land supply in the autumn when I would imagine and hope things will have changed regarding the amount of land supply. Now secondly because the council's adopted development plan is more than five years old as we all know it's 2008 part of it and 2014 another part of it. Our five year housing land supply has to be calculated using the standard methodology need figure and this figure is calculated without taking into account any constraints so it doesn't matter whether we've got Greenbelt or not we just get a figure. Also at that figure 634 homes per year and when you consider her core strategy was 125 and we generally managed to do about 250 that's lacking great figure. Also we have to add a 20% buffer so that takes us to the figure of 761 homes per year so that's what we're judged against. That's what the calculation is based on. I mean you know I believe that's ridiculous and an unrealistically high figure in a district like this where we're 94% Greenbelt, two national landscapes, major infrastructure constraints like junction six and other parts of the strategic road network. So I just wanted to say at the beginning because I'm not sure it would be appropriate for Katja to emphasise those things but I wanted to emphasise them because that is the context of what we're looking at here with our land supply and the action plan. I'm going to shut up now and Katja. Thanks Catherine, you've just sort of covered half my note for me so I'll be a bit briefer but I think what I'd like to highlight is you know just to pick out the figure on housing land supply that Catherine has alluded to. So the report is sort of noting that we've got 1.92 years of housing land supply which is an improvement on previous figures and if you'll note in sort of paragraph 29 we have also highlighted how that five year housing land supply will increase once those section 106 agreements for those applications that Catherine was referring to are included and that would raise our five year housing land supply by another 0.54 years. So that is definitely sort of you know an upward trend in terms of the five year housing land supply which is really quite impressive when you think about the constraints that the district has been facing and the challenges we've had. I think the other couple of figures to highlight are sort of the windfall completions. They are averaging at 234 per year if you look at it since 2013. Those figures are sort of relatively high and the reason being is they're calculated now as to development that is to be delivered that is not in the local plan. So all our allocations in the adopted local plan have been developed so everything is treated as a windfall at the moment which gives us that relatively high value in terms of windfall development. I think the other thing that's worth highlighting is the interim policy statement for housing delivery and what we've done is some analysis on how many dwellings have been delivered as a result of that policy statement which is 190 which again is a great achievement. So this report also looks at sort of the root causes of the current delivery position and there are sort of a number of factors which Catherine already alluded to as to why we're in the situation we are. So the planning designations of Greenbelt and AOMB, infrastructure constraints particularly around highways and the local plan status resulting in the use of the standard method to calculate local housing need. And then we've set out some key actions that we'll be following in the coming period. They are centred around the continuation of use of the interim policy housing delivery statement which we've now separated as a standalone document and published on the website so people can refer to that more easily. Obviously we're working on a new local plan and various supporting documents that will be helpful. We're doing regular updates to the Brownfield Land Register and then we're continuing measures that were sort of identified in the last housing delivery test action plan such as planning performance agreements and pre-application service. So that's it from me. Any questions? Councillor Proulx. Yes, just a question probably going back to your opening statement Catherine if I may. Is it as gloomy as that? We talked about the standard methodology requiring 634 plus with a 20% buffer and I believe that's based on 2014 housing needs figures. And that was in our local plan indeed. That was a starting point for our local plan still. But since then we have had some NPPF refreshes. And in the last NPPF I looked at it did make allowances for because you mentioned also no constraints were taken into account, can be taken into account. My last recollection of that NPPF was that it did make allowances. There was recognition that local constraints could be taken into account. Can you comment on that? Oh yes they can be but that initial figure has to be that figure. So you start from that point but you can at the moment and I know certainly I think if a Labour Government gets in there saying they're going to take away any ability to adjust that. I think the old local plan was under 2012 wasn't it and that was a lower figure that was from memory it was 7,400 over the period I think it was 400 and something. Anyway it wasn't 634 I think it was 473 or something. The only other thing I'd say and I don't know if Katja agrees if they changed the 2014 figures to anything that followed 2016 2018 it would benefit Tandridge hugely because it will come right down. But at the moment they stuck with the 2014. I'd probably echo that I mean the government's been quite clear with the methodology that they currently use it only works for the 2014 projections. They have committed to looking at that and looking at whether there's an alternative method that could be used to do the calculation using later projections and that's something that they're looking at. But again we have to wait and see. So it's really through the local plan process we'll end up with what will be a more realistic requirement for the district which takes into account all the constraints that we face. So we're just in that sort of slight limbo state at the moment because our plan is more than five years old. Thank you. Councillor Allen. Thank you Madam Chairman. I thought that I read something that those figures can be considered advisory based on everyone's local greenbelt restrictions and other things like that. Did I read the wrong report? And a couple of things I know it may sound stupid but when we allow all these extensions so another family can move in, are they added as part of the housing? We should have lots of extensions now where people live on top of a house. Does that qualify for something? And because the 106 you've just mentioned when do permissions become a number towards the LHN then? So in terms of the advisory nature of the targets that comes into play when you start your local plan process. So through the local plan you start with the housing need and then you work through the process to get to a housing requirement. So that's why it's advisory and so you work towards that sort of final figure. In terms of the extensions it depends I think it's very nuanced how they count all these things but it's whether it's an actual separate dwelling. So if it's a flat, if it's just like a granny annex it probably doesn't count towards the statistics. And in terms of applications it's when the section 106 is signed that's when we can formally count it and it becomes part of our supply. Apologies, without the 106 I meant. Sorry say that again then. Without 106 it's when do permissions, they don't all need a 106 do they? No but then it's as soon as it's determined. So it's just that the determination is not classed as finalised on larger applications until we've got the section 106 signed. And that was my question so at what point through that process do they become a number that we need? If we give permission for a house at the next Planning Committee at what stage will that become within the numbers? As soon as we register it on our own internal systems as determined. I mean for example Councillor Allen the St Piers one I think only came through in March although we made the determination I think early last June or something last year so it seemed to take quite a long time. And just on that business of what you were asking about the advisory point, the five year housing land supply which is separate calculation that has to be done because we've got an adopted development plan that is more than five years old that has to be done on the figure. So all the time we're calculating against the seven whatever I said it was six one figure. It's only we can only use the advisory starting point when we're doing a new local plan when we then look at the requirement and if that plan gets adopted then we can use that figure but the minute we have to use the standard figure. Okay apologies for that because I thought you know exactly more positively that advisory meant that we're supposed to do 200 but we're proving we can only do 100. I thought that's what advisory meant and that through the local plan we'd have to prove why we couldn't do it. Well in that process we can start taking the constraints into account and say that we can this is our requirement and we can I think that's where the advisory thing comes in but doesn't help us with our current five year housing land supply because we have to calculate that. We haven't got any leeway on that. That has to be done against the seven six one. I think it's linked to the confusion of having multiple processes that we have to follow. So we've got a local plan process which obviously takes roughly a cycle of five years to produce and adopt one and then you review it again but alongside that we've got regular things that we have to produce like the housing delivery test figures and the five year housing land supply that we have to demonstrate and so two things are slightly out of sync hence we've sort of got two processes which makes it complex to explain and understand I think but yeah. With an appeal you see we would it would be said oh Tandridge has only got a half five year housing land supply of one point nine two or hopefully and shortly of two point five four which isn't too bad but you know that is judged against this huge number which makes it difficult. Councillor Gaffney. Thank you very much. I'm looking at 332 where it says that the cumulative total of the houses that we built from 2006 to March 2024 is 4609 and that's an average of 251 per year which in an area where you can only build on six per cent of the land doesn't seem to be too bad I have to say. It's a lot better than I thought it was that's for sure. I just have a really quick query with regard to that. Do we know how much of that was affordable? Even in the last say ten years how many affordable units have we built in the last ten years out of the list that's there? I don't think it's in the report. I'm just I'm kind of curious even from 2006 to 2024 would be very interesting but certainly like in the last ten years I would because the figure is actually not a bad figure from I think you know. I think it's in the monitoring report but I might be wrong. I apologise then in that case I must have missed that thank you. Can't remember what it is but I think it's in there. Okay thank you. Any other questions? Okay if not then could we ask if the housing delivery test action plan is agreed as per the recommendation on page 60? Thank you. And then the lovely authority monitoring report which is yet another document that we are legally required to produce so they're all coming tonight hence this very long agenda or very large number of pages. This one reports among other things on how the council is performing in relation to its planning policies. Katja. Thanks. It feels a bit like deja vu since we presented one at the last committee as well but so just to remind you this is sort of like a document that's sort of monitoring the progress of the council against its development plan policies. So obviously there's various sections within it that looks at the progress against the local development scheme which obviously we're starting a new one today so that would be something to report on in future years. And looking at the sort of performance against development plan policies we've been doing pretty well so we've had roughly 238 net dwelling completions in the last year so bringing us to a total of 4,509 dwellings since the local plan was adopted. This year we've had 77 affordable housing completions so 73 affordable rent and four shared ownership. Housing balance and location of development targets were both met. 83% of housing development on previously developed land and 91% of the gross dwelling completions were for three bedrooms or fewer. So neighbourhood plans reporting on progress there there's quite a lot of activity on that and we'll be talking about that a bit later. We've had a few more entries on the self-build and custom house building register another seven this year. And then the sill data just to flag that that isn't updated for this report because it's not aligned with the reporting period. And then just a bit of more information on the interim policy statement for housing delivery. I think key things to highlight we've delivered 190 dwellings as a result of that policy and there are potential 270 development dwellings that could be permitted based on that. Housing land supply we've just touched on that so I won't repeat that again. Yeah and I think that is probably it in terms of things I wanted to highlight. Any questions on this one? No questions if not shall we ask the committee do you approve the AMF publication as per the recommendation on page 93? Thank you. Planning enforcement is the next one and this is an update to last June's enforcement policy and myself and the chair of planning Councillor Blackwell hope and believe this amended document has now realistically identified priorities and reflected enforcement officer workloads with realistic timescales for achieving them. You've probably seen we've adjusted we've adjusted them and we've adjusted the number of policies. Just before I go to Tarin I was going to ask Councillor Blackwell to say something because I know you wanted to make a couple of comments didn't you? Yeah just really that since we reviewed the the last one and adopted it obviously quite a lot has happened in enforcement we've had quite a change of staff and we've been Councillor Sarah and obviously various officers and myself have been really keeping an eye on it and having a look at what was in the previous policy that we put forward to and I think everybody remembers that we we put that forward with the hope of aspiring basically to those timeframes and it was brought up quite a lot of that committee that you know it was a big wish list that that is what we want to aspire to for for our enforcement and I would like to say you know it still is something that we would like to aspire to but at the moment and reviewing the caseloads and our situation with with enforcement officers I think we just have to be realistic as to what we can achieve and there's absolutely no point having a policy that we can't we can't realise in any any shape and form so so yeah so we've so we've reviewed it and we're hoping that that this policy actually along with enforcement officers who have who've sort of you know given their you know input into it that this will be a lot more realistic and we could hold them to more account with this policy I'll just turn it over to Taryn to go through you've said some of it but I'm not sure there's a huge amount more to say but I just wanted from the officer perspective just to explain a little bit further I mean a little bit like what Tom mentioned earlier around attracting staff where they know they're moving to an authority with caseloads that are able to be dealt with and they're able to do a good job in the same way for enforcement caseloads and enforcement timeliness if we set the bar too high and it's completely unachievable it's going to be very difficult to attract enforcement officers but at the same time the main principles of the policy are exactly the same and there are a few areas where the time and response has been relaxed and I think is more appropriate and as we deal with enforcement and get a more more capacity and deal with some of the issues and we've touched on that and I can touch on that a little bit more then we will potentially be able to review again and see if we can get some of those response times back up to those aspirations but for the time being it's much better to ensure that we get out we do the right things even if it may take 24 hours or so longer so just to touch on some of the things that we are doing around enforcement at the moment I'm very aware it's obviously very important for members and officers in Tandridge and we do have a number of very high profile cases at the moment which are taking up a huge amount of time and not just always enforcement officers the rest of the team and actually the rest of the council very much are sometimes involved in that the incident that we had two weeks ago obviously started off with our chief legal officer as well as the leader going out and Cliff our consultant but since then we've had enforcement officers out there or the tree preservation officer out there on a regular basis we've also had the police with us constantly and we're now getting different services like environmental health and building control and a variety of other services where potentially they need to get involved as well so it's very much a joint action group response at this time but more generally around enforcement you know we're very aware that we've got a number of issues in that and there are a number of cases that need following up there are quite a few that are very complex and we've taken a step back and a bit like we did actually with development management which I think you very much recognize today we need to look at how we deal with that moving forward and potentially put in some very targeted resources to deal with sort of the level of caseloads the level of complexity so we're very much at that exploratory stage at the moment we are looking at what more resource we might be able to bring in or could we work with external organizations again in DM we worked with an external company for some of the householder applications that actually made us really sort of get through some of the backlog so are there some other kind of options out there to work with other partners so we're doing that at the moment it's part of the improvement plan and I hope that we well we will be making some decisions and taking making some real pace in that so enforcement is really front and center of sort of our improvement at the moment and so I just wanted to mention that alongside sort of the policy amendments. Ms Deeds. Thank you for that Taryn it's really good news that we are progressing on what was happening a couple of weeks ago but the reason that I feel it's necessary to find out from Tom what how long it has taken for the other two appeals from start of having an enforcement order put on to the time that the appeal was actually dismissed is relevant to the residents whose lives this is affecting because if it's going on for two years as one of them is then it does have serious implications for the health and well-being of residents around those these particular sites that we are dealing with at the moment so to to understand how long it is going to take for an appeal to actually be dismissed is quite relevant to our residents and that is why I ask the question. Thank you. Well I think I think the experience at the Tan House Road in Oxstead gives you some idea and I was trying to say this to the residents at Shipley Bridge that's now 18 months it was supposed to be heard this week but has been postponed because of illness so I don't suppose it's going to come back till the end of the year so we're up to two years because it was November no it was yeah November or December that it's that it started two years ago so it's a long time and that's we have to be realistic and I think on this policy I don't want people to think we're diluting it it may look like we are but we're not we're just trying to get it to work and we want to we want it to be what it was originally but we have to be realistic and it wasn't a popular wasn't a popular policy was it with officers so we have to you know we have to find something that works. Councillor Gray. I obviously very much understand the constraints on us the thing that's just striking me is that everything here is in response to allegations of breaches which is I suppose how most enforcement happens but is all is it do we aspire to get beyond that is all enforcement actions action in response to a complaint what I'm thinking is that something like a sustainable drainage solution I mean it's not likely to you know a failure to comply with a sustainable drainage solution thing is not likely to draw its attention to a neighbour or a counsellor or a person up do we ever aspire to be proactive in kind of identifying that that is something we actually need to check whether they've done or not irrespective of whether anyone complains do we do we do it spires down the road to be proactive in that sort of way I mean I'd say I think we would aspire to do that I think it's it's going to take a while to get anywhere near that I thought you were going to ask about preemptive action which is something I have raised because we often know that there's signs that something's going to happen and you know can we do that before we get into a Shipley Bridge situation but that's not what you asked you asked about in enforcing conditions and checking on I suppose glazed windows and that sort of thing I think we're quite a long way away from that we'd want to do that but it's often not until it's raised to actually be proactive and go out and check all this stuff is is difficult Tom yes thank you madam chairman I think what you're referring to is a compliance officer so somebody which goes out and make sure conditions are complied with very few local authorities in my experience have those have the luxury for a compliance officer simply purely on the basis that it's a resource which needs to be paid for and the priority in planning enforcement is to remedies any breaches of planning control so it's more of a reactive service you may get some compliance officers and more of a proactive approach in some of the London boroughs which have got larger teams and larger resources available to them but in my experience having a compliance officer would be really good but not many authorities do but it's no reason we can't aspire to to having such a post thank you for that response yeah I mean in respect to things like glazing it's it's you know it's an aspiration that we may never meet but in terms of something like sustainable drainage solutions the failure to implement a sustainable drainage solution down the road could have really catastrophic you know implications and outcomes you know I suppose in a way it comes back to how many conditions do you put on planning applications as well because you've got to be sure that they're going to be complied with and if an application I don't know what Tom thinks if it needs lots and lots of conditions is this maybe not not shouldn't be approved yeah planning conditions should only be imposed which will make the development acceptable so they should be kept to a minimal amount as possible but saying that if a development requires lots of conditions in order to make it acceptable then then that's what it needs I just to test that a bit we can't refuse a planning application where it can be made acceptable by the by the imposition of a condition so it follows from that that we can't start turning down planning applications just because we haven't got the staff to proactively enforce a condition I suppose now that must be true I guess that's true isn't it you can't turn it down because you think the conditions won't can't be checked yes so one of the tests there's six tests which all conditions need to adhere to one of them is enforceable whether there's any condition can you enforce that condition amongst other other tests so if it's not enforceable then you shouldn't be imposed in that condition and therefore you should be refused an application if it's an issue but not something being when you say something is not enforceable you're not saying it's not enforceable just in the sense you haven't got enough staff to enforce it that's not what non-enforceable means is it correct that's not not what I'm saying enforce within in planning terms yeah it's not because you haven't got the resources to enforce it it's because the condition just isn't doesn't is not enforceable for for various planning reasons Councillor Allen thank you madam chair um can I just I'm trying to understand this you're saying we've now bracketed nearly every complaint we're going to get within one two and three is that what we're trying to say there and next question is why is number why is top of page 220 got no number and it's only non-applicable I think if we're going to be positive shouldn't we at least try and put 35 days or 50 days or something in it rather than it's not applicable I presume this is going on the website people people will be looking at it and my and the point is you know how would a system work because we all make you know enforcement claims and we get a little email back sometimes it quotes what we've done will we now start to put this is a priority two case we hope to get back to you within five to 10 working days or a priority three and we hope to get back to you within 10 or 15 days I mean is that part of the bigger picture yeah that's certainly what we we should be doing we should be using this and and moving forward and assessing the information that's come through the breach but through this table which priority it sits in and in that confirmation email letting you know or letting residents know so that we're managing their expectations so that's certainly how it should work moving forward and a right of appeal I mean if I don't agree with your number three and I want it number two what is the right of appeal because again the public will ask the same questions won't they why are you not doing it you say you're going to do it on your piece of paper but you've said you're not going to do it now because it's not a priority well it should fall within one of those parties um either one two or three so if it's in one of those then that's how it should be approached just regarding your not applicable thing I'm assuming that's because it's not applicable to serve temporary stop notice and enforcement notices on those particular things I mean the target response is the same there within 10 to 15 working days but is that right Tom now that's correct so you should read I could understand this slightly misunderstanding yes so you should read on the top of page 220 220 then the two which are on the following page which are by themselves they are category three because you can't serve temporary stop notices or stop notices on those types of of of of breaches there's a there are other methods to remedy those breaches then that's the reason why they're not applicable but they are form of part of of priority three safety paid with longer there would just be last thing madam chairman if I may it really upsets me when we keep saying enforcement is discretionary it is not it is statutory and can we keep quoting that based on our policy now it's not discretionary anymore it's we have a policy is statutory and we will deal with it under the policy thank you the investigating is statutory but the actual whether you take actually enforcement action itself is discretionary and that is each so when I say discretionary in statutory it's not a it's like a national requirement status requirements as late as laid out by by by government hence the reason why it's down to each authority local 40 to have a their own enforcement plan to identify how they're going to do led breaches of planning control when I say they'd reach the planning control and until we know there is actually a breach then we can't say there is definitely a breach so when that's why we need to go and investigate and start investigation which is statutory but the amount of taking action is is discretionary we could be more positive by saying it is statutory and we're dealing with it we don't need to say it's discretionary you're you are according to Terry you're now going to respond to this in a positive way so they don't need to know it may or may not be discretionary the answer will be there's nothing for us to chase I think it is quite discretionary how much effort a council puts into enforcement some councils don't seem to put very much in at all we would like to put a lot of effort in but it's the money and it's finding the people to do it and I think it it's still quite aspirational but this hopefully is realistic and we'll do this certainly what we intend to do we don't have to tell everyone we do it your way and not this way um any other questions council Lockwood uh yes um the council do have a very difficult uh task in terms of enforcement um you know sort of looking back in history over the previous 25 30 years we haven't had a very strong enforcement policy it's been conciliation not confrontation I think was the catch word a catch phrase of the head of enforcement at the time and um so it seems as though there are plots of land within the district that seem to have open season and the landowners not necessarily um uh unofficial occupants but the owners have no regard for planning at all um and I perfectly understand that there is a difficulty with staffing and dealing with each of these but I have an enforcement case that was reported on the 23rd of May I haven't had any notification about what has happened I have escalated it several times and there is nothing uh coming back to me as to what's happened to that uh and in the meantime this is unofficial Gatwick airport parking um you know you're talking about at two o'clock in the morning people are driving up long drives off long lingfield common road knocking on houses of elderly people living on their own at two o'clock in the morning and saying where is the Gatwick airport parking I'm lost because there's about 50 houses stretched along half a mile that have the same postcode um and in from from when I reported it on the 23rd of May when there were probably only 200 cars there there are now 500 cars on the site um and the owner of the facility is using his private vehicle to ferry at ten pounds a pop the passengers to the airport um I'm sure it's an unlicensed taxi I've reported it to the taxi licensing department had nothing back from them at all obviously it's not planning but I'm really surprised that nothing's happened um and every day I'm getting emails from residents saying what on earth are you going to do about it and I say report it and all they get back is there's an enforcement number it's already been reported you don't need to report it again um so so there seem to be some places where Gatwick airport parking is dealt with promptly but not on lingfield common road and it is a real and Councillor Sir Nicholas knows it's a real blot on the on the landscape and he's a very aggressive landowner so you will need someone to go with the enforcement officer when you do the site visit I know what you mean Councillor Lockwood because after I've been to Shipley Bridge we went to look at that one so I know exactly where it is and exactly what you mean um at the time uh you know it it should have had some action taken I'm sorry it hasn't we need to look at it so put it on the list hopefully near the top of the list yes and just my apologies too and I think this is why we really need to look at um the enforcement team really and and and how we strengthen that team and how we deal with the backlogging cases so I mean all this does is sort of evidence why you know we've made huge improvements and thank you for acknowledging that in in development management more generally and applications we now need to focus our attention on enforcement but I would say I think by necessity there's an element of triaging all these things you know the Shipley Bridge one is the worst I've ever seen and that one has had to take priority um and we just have to do them as they come in and and prioritize them at the moment but hopefully if we address enough of them strongly it will discourage because I think I think you're right there has been a feeling that this district is a bit of a soft touch and that has to stop because it's not going to be in the future and we we have to put the money into that because these appeals are hugely expensive and the people on the other side you know they've got a lot of money and they employ very good advocates anyway any other questions Councillor Gaffney thank you very much um it's just a really quick point it's regard to what Martin's just said about the word discretionary I don't like that either because I think people when you say discretionary people think that there's going to be lots of leeway about what they can and can't do I get the discretionary bit but I think it's the wrong word so I'm going to I'm going to agree with Martin on that thank you well um the problem is anybody who is doing these things knows it's discretionary um the other we have to also be realistic about expectations because a lot of people think you know you must come out and do you have to come and do x y z and we have to balance that finances with all the other things we have to do um I don't know Tom do you I mean it is in fact discretionary isn't it so I don't know if we should remove that word or not it is discretionary I think that's what it says in the government guidance and the word discretionary obviously um for the sake of repeating myself investigating is statutory discretionary is whether you take action and what action you take and that needs to be proportionate to the to the breach um so I would probably what I would advise against dropping that word discretionary uh Councillor Allen and then Councillor Pursehouse thank you thank you again I understood from Tarin that we're sort of moving into letting people know what we're going to do so many times we won't even need to use the word discretionary we'll just tell them what we've done and what we're not going to do so we're not hopefully we shouldn't need to lead it use it so much uh can I just you asked a question so when Helen Murch came here she asked all the Councillors for priority of their enforcement and I think we gave her a list is that list still in operation are we still working on it do we need to send it all in again and who do we need to send it to please no you don't need you shouldn't need to send it in again um it probably needs dusting off um so I will take an action away to to to see if I can find that and make sure that Tom is aware of it being you thank you Councillor Pursehouse uh thank you chairman um I've had a particular enforcement problem up here in Wallingham I'm not going to say exactly where it is because it would warn people I don't particularly want to warn but it's been ready I've been told for enforcement action for the last month and I've talked to the parish council and other people who have been concerned about it and said uh Tandridge is about to act on this um and it will be within days and it just hasn't happened and trying to get a an update on exactly where we are and why things haven't happened has been horrendous I can't seem to get any information back it is important that when we do do enforcement uh operations the the local councillors are kept informed of exactly what is happening so that they can help uh inform local people and even manage expectations sometimes but uh it's becoming I've become incredibly frustrated about this thank you oh yeah well I agree I think that's another thing communication and what we've done actually in Shipley Bridge is probably a model for what we should try and do elsewhere um we've done it partly because we had lots of residents coming in here and we've got an email list and we're trying to update them regularly on exactly what we're doing when that ideally is what we should do whenever there's a large enforcement issue or even a fairly small one we should at least update the councillors so um yeah I think we need to take that forward in how enforcement officers act yeah Councillor Purcell so do you mind uh just sending me your latest emails that you sent across to the enforcement team on that I'll follow up uh it would be I've been trying to um connect by phone and the last email I sent was please call me um that one will be fine I've been talking to Cliff mainly about this okay so there's that one and Gatwick which are um priorities as far as we can make them and we look through the list that came into Helen and see what's on there is there anything else Councillor Steeds yeah if you're saying that those two are priority are we saying that enforcement orders have been placed on all the others that we've got that haven't been or were supposed to be being done well we'd have to check where all these orders have gone I mean um I think Bewkes has been done hasn't it I don't know um I've got I know that a few have been done but I don't know if all have we need to just go through the lists and check because they are all serious yeah I had a tour of them all with Cliff when we went to Shipley bridge I know I went to about seven or eight or nine of them and then that's I didn't go to Wallingham so add those in as well and they're all really serious Councillor Spencer thank you chair just I guess a question given the frustrations that everyone's expressed here and Councillor Blackwell's sort of comments at the beginning leading into into this saying it's not an ideal policy and I was just wondering and excuse my ignorance is there a trigger to review the policy considering it's not ideal do we have a date or a set of statistics or even a recruitment milestone that would bring this back to the fore and then potentially revise and address some of the frustrations that have been mentioned here well it does say that it'll be coming back in six months you know that we'll be doing an update in six months and we can review it any time to be fair you know but we do need to get you know things put in motion first see where we get with this and it's going to be something again that's going to be ongoing but yeah we can we can review this at any this document any time yeah if we say it's coming back at six months and then we'll fix it for another six months because I don't think it's going to be resolved to everybody's satisfaction very quickly just hope to improve it and depending on what resources we can put into it any other questions okay well if not then are we happy I'll use that word in inverted commas to adopt the revised planning enforcement policy as per the recommendation on page 213 thank you Gatwick next update on Gatwick the second runway development consent order more hearings been taking place this week I think and and they continue often on and off until the end of August and then the planning inspectors decision about the end of November yes madam I should have introduced you Tom thank you Tom Jones is the planning policy specialist and has been looking at Gatwick good evening councillors yes that's the timetable is that the the examining authority will make a recommendation to the sacred state three months after within three months after the examination ends on the 27th of August and then the it will be a new secretary of state another new secretary of state for transport will need to make a decision by February 2025 so between now and then just as a brief introduction to report a reminder that it's Gatwick Airport Limited's development consent order would allow work for it on the northern runway an associated development that would significantly increase passenger traffic and a reminder that the tangent district council we are a consultee in that process and the only matter I really wanted to highlight the chairs just highlighted that there's a timetable as a an appendix to the report but the key point I wanted to highlight is that working in collaboration with joint authorities at 11 of us in total we are submitting evidence into the examinations seeking environmentally managed growth to be a condition of if if the order was to be made and that would impose can limitations on noise transport movements surface access commitments air quality and carbon emissions that the development there could be no commitment to increasing air traffic until those were met whereas Gatwick Airport Limited prefers and advocates for a process where they would effectively manage that themselves and the recourse will be through the civilization civil aviation authority and the secretary of state they were that that was the only point I really want to emphasize to introduce the the item thank you okay thanks Tom any questions Councillor White chair thank you I'm very concerned about this because unfortunately Gatwick Airport are not being totally open as to what's happening and at the meeting today with the examiner I gather there were a lot of questions and Tom might like to highlight one or two of those where Gatwick have suddenly admitted there were failures in their original pronouncement and that they're talking at the last GATCOM meeting of ten days ago they were talking about new long-distance airlines coming in from China from Nigeria from Azerbaijan Turkmenistan and all these are going to come in early doors in the morning that night flights are not being stopped at all if anything they're going to go up and Gatwick Heathrow does have basically a close down but Gatwick are from what I can see ignoring all of this and are just wanting to have as many aircraft coming in and out as they can and population going through from 40 odd million to 74 million people a year now the roads just cannot bear that sort of traffic and there's suggestion that there should be better bus services these bus services just are not realistic and people with families etc are not going to use a bus to get to the airport they're going to go in their own car and that it was even suggested that people who work at Gatwick should cycle whether it be from East Grinstead or wherever and it's just a nonsense and the roads cannot take it and having inherited fell bridge I've got to know a little bit about the copthorn road which is diabolical and that they're suggesting with heavy lawyers going down there there should be cycles bicycles and people should get be driving to and fro or should not be driving to and fro there now I see in the Daily Telegraph today wanting a direct railway line from Kent to Gatwick well where is that going to come from because as far as I can see that would have to be a new line and I don't think that's going to happen HS2 is having a problem but so I'm very concerned about it thank you. Since Councillor Wight Tom did you want to say any more about presumably all that was flagged up at the hearings? Yes at the points Councillor Wight is making that there are points that we as the joint authorities we're paying into the examination yes but just to confirm it that the there were two hearings this week and Gal submitted evidence at the start of the examination which one would hope the examining authority took great exception to but they haven't made such a comment yet as we get closer to the end of the examination we want to be sure that all parties have had a fair opportunity to comment on what is constantly shifting proposals from Gatwick. Thank you Councillor Lockwood. Firstly I'd like to commend the council for investing so much in their response and submissions to the Gatwick DCO. They have jointly with the other local authorities an excellent KC Michael Bedford he's been absolutely ace in terms of delivering the absolute perfect questions at the at the public hearings and the documentation the submissions from this council are of top quality and I think it's great that we have a council now that's taking into consideration the overall impact of the growth of Gatwick is going to have on residents and people who work here as well in terms of traffic congestion noise pollution air pollution etc etc whereas before Tandridge used to take a bit of a back seat where Gatwick's growth was concerned Tandridge is now much more proactive and I also would like to commend Tom for his involvement in drawing in the parish councils obviously as representatives from Lingfield and Dormanson we had an opportunity to meet Tom where he gave us an update to the parish council level and I suggested actually that his report is circulated to the parish councils after it's approved tonight and I want to thank him for the way he has engaged with the parish councils and I have to agree with Councillor Silicon's right Gatwick have not been playing it straight right from the word go it's in fact it's never played it straight with local communities and this whole DCO process has has uncovered quite a few cans of worms watching some of those public hearings and the way Gatwick has been grilled and I'm like I take pride in the fact that Tandridge is there right at the front asking those really pertinent questions through through the KC so a vote of appreciation from me. Thank you Councillor Lockwood and I think that's true we haven't been able to put as much money as we would like into it because it has been a bit of a bottomless pick Gatwick to say least but I think what we spent has been spent well and you know also Tom I think you've done a really good job in keeping track of it all because it's it's quite mammoth all of the paperwork etc. Councillor Allen. Thank you madam chairman completely sympathised obviously with the south of the borough we only have about 10 incursions over the no-fly zone of Tatsville but I still battle constantly against them but on a positive side is there any talk at all about electric aircraft electric cars everything that they do on the airport will be electric and presumably much less pollutant pollution and much less noise is any of that actually coming through as are they giving any of that back to the nuisance that they're actually causing? Thank you. Tom. Thank you chair yes electric cars yes but I think electric aircraft it's certainly at a commercial scale a long way off that they are bringing in less noisy aircraft for some improvement and aircraft fuels will be less polluting but not significantly so. Councillor Steeds. Thank you chair just to reiterate what has already been said that Tandridge is doing a very good job but also Surrey I have to say is doing a very good job as well we we are all looking at the same issues I am the Surrey County Councillor for Fellbridge as well as other areas and it is it is going to impact very very seriously on noise pollution cars I mean traffic coming from the south as well as the north we've got the problem with the with the junction of Copsthorn Road and the A22 and I think that there is an awful lot of work going on behind the scenes as well so it is a joint effort with all the boroughs districts and Surrey and West Sussex as well so to commend everyone for the work that they're trying to do to get this sorted and I think that if if it does go ahead we are going to be really it's going to be very very serious if they have another thousand houses built around the airport to accommodate extra staff which is also on the cards. Thank you. I was just going to say Councillor Steed I think that's a really good point before we had Tom we had a bit of a gap in resource and we have had some excellent officers on this but we have also had some gaps along the way and it's only been with that great partnership working with Surrey County Council but also with Rygate and all of them all of the joint authorities that actually when we have had those slight downsides or pooling our resources we have been able to provide such a strong response so I absolutely advocate what you say. If there's nothing else are we happy to note the report Tom's report as per recommendation on page 225. Thank you. Neighbourhood plans of which there are a lot and just to bang on about resources again you know we've got what is it I think 1.5 million pounds and that includes the 1 million local plan reserve so we got half a million pounds to all the planning policy work for 24/25 and part of that a big chunk of that work is the neighbourhood plans there's a lot of them I think there's 10 designated areas now they're coming forward and you can you can see how many there are anyway having said that we're very pleased this evening to that Tatsfield has completed the process with Gold Star I understand and so we're being asked tonight to formally incorporate the Tatsfield neighbourhood plan into the development plan for district. Katja did you want to talk about all the many neighbourhood plans that are heading your way thank you. Thank you I will do a quick summary but before I dive into that I just want to flag a couple of amendments in the committee report and thanks to Councillor Allen for flagging these so on paragraph 43 at the end of the second line where it says funded by the parish we should also add the words and government grants and then in paragraph 44 where it says covered by the grant where it says council immediately after that it should say received and that makes a lot more sense so apologies for missing those two typos. As Catherine has said we are continuing to having a very busy period in terms of neighbourhood planning I see tonight we're considering the the Tatsfield neighbourhood plan we've also got a review of Dormansland underway we're doing HRA and SEA screenings in progress for Dormansland, Godstone, Caterham and the next Birstow so they're certainly keeping us super busy we've also had some conversations with Oxstead who are also now considering whether they might do a neighbourhood plan so we're waiting to hear what they think on that matter. Turning to Tatsfield in particular obviously that underwent examination at the start of the year and was found to meet all the legal requirements and so could therefore proceed to referendum the referendum was held on the 2nd of May and 90% of voters voted in favour of it which is like an outstanding number and so given this result the council now has a duty to make the plan unless we have any concerns that it would breach retained EU obligations or any convention rights and we have no such concerns and are therefore recommending the plan should be made and formally part of the development plan for the district. Any questions? Councillor Lockwood. I'll save the praise for the Tatsfield neighbourhood plan I just want to make some comments about the other neighbourhood plans that I'm aware of on page 12 page 273 there's a mention that Crowhurst parish was designated. Crowhurst parish submitted to the then neighbourhood planning officer Emma Amis on the 17th of October in 2018 a completed draft plan for consideration by the district council they chased as to what the response was they were waiting for a written response from the council it was chased in April 2019 and that was not followed up so there was no no outcome to that there was no response to that original question so Crowhurst have actually finished their neighbourhood plan it's got to a draft stage and has been submitted to Tandridge for their comments before going out to public consultation they had a plan check done by some planning consultants but it's obviously the time lapse it's going to need updating so I have suggested to them that that's something that could be done and the other one is Tandridge parish which mentioned in paragraph 21 the work has been suspended they are working on it but it's been suspended until the reopening of the grant applications once the general election is over so it is in progress but they're awaiting fresh grant applications in order to get it to the next stage so that's just to update on that and then I'll hand over to Martin. Thanks for the update Councillor Lockwood. Councillor Allen. Yeah thank you madam chairman and on behalf of everyone the gentleman sitting behind me here is the one that's did all of your changes and dots T's and cross I's along with someone else so you don't have to read it all I commend it to you all it started in two thousand and Ian will say 2012 but it actually started in two thousand and seventeen I got roped into it towards the end of two thousand and eighteen thought I was doing well and then that thing came along you know Covid so Covid completely you know hit us everywhere we couldn't meet we had to start doing it over zoom and we couldn't really meet and then of course unfortunately the council lost offices and we stalled for far too long so my first thanks would be to Helen Murch who immediately grasped the nettle and employed Katya was already here I think so she was part of it as well but she employed our outside planning expert who really worked very hard with us but equally we worked just as hard back we were given two weeks to respond to things and they got the answers the following Monday they gave it to us on Friday we worked hard they got it back on Monday because we had to meet this May the 2nd deadline and without it we wouldn't have done it so thank you to everyone Helen I know she's not here Katya thank you Emma thank you but especially Rebecca if she's watching it's a marvelous document even better in color so if you'd like to see it in color I'll happily share one with you all right so I commend it to the house as they say thank you madam chairman thanks Councillor Allen on that note then are we happy to with recommendations A to C on page 272 are we happy to agree those thank you and well done is it Mr Mitchell at the back okay and now the next one is the high-wheeled AOMB if it's still called that or national landscape or whatever management plan so we're being asked to approve the management plan which sets out the details for conservation and management over the next five years Katya did you want to just present it oh sorry Tom it's you didn't know you did things other than Gatwick but you obviously do all these things keep popping up yes all right thank you very very brief introduction so it's requesting the formal approval of the high-wheeled AOMB management plan it is formally a national landscape but we are still allowed to call it an AOMB they were called national landscapes to avoid confusion apparently of what they are figure that one out so another example of collaborative working in this case there's just 15 local authorities as part and others part of the AOMB management board and the AOMB management plan will inform decisions on planning applications we'll form the new local plan and neighbourhood plans and that's all I wanted to say to introduce thank you okay thank you very much I'm gonna stick with AOMB anyway because council Lockwood I would like to commend this to the council it's an excellent management plan I was the high-wheeled AOMB council rep for many years and at the time when the previous management plan was brought in and had the pleasure of recommending it to this council for adoption they are incredibly well written plans and I would also commend anyone who's going to do a design guide for a neighbourhood plan to have a look at the high-wheeled AOMB design guide because that is an incredibly well written document and follows all the national guidelines and it makes a really good planning tool for for local areas but I I think the the only thing that I would like to ask is can and and so Nicholas may want to follow this up we are obliged we volunteered to make a contribution every year to the high-wheeled AOMB and there was a bit of a hiccup in change of officers at one point and Tandridge were owing a little bit of money it's not a huge amount considering the quality of the documents that they prepare as part of the collaboration work so I just wanted to make sure that the council were fulfilling its financial obligation as a modest amount every year to go towards the particularly the planning work that the high-wheeled AOMB management board joint management board undertake. Thank you I think we have paid it's £2560 or something we have we have we have paid it. Councillor White. Thank you I think the high-wheeled AOMB management team are brilliant they're really really conscientious they're very small in number and they are out to help guide farmers who want to improve their land etc and I just cannot speak more highly of them they really are brilliant and I've even got them coming to talk to a farmer which is just off the high-wheeled but on the Hexted Road and that he was perfectly happy to come and talk because it's trying to help improve the quality of land so that animals and wildlife generally are looked after and I've also been talking to them unfortunately with regards to Gatwick and all the aircraft noise which does disrupt the Ashdown forest which is all part of it but no we really should well we I know we're going to support this but we need to give as much attention and care and added financial support if we're and when we're able to thank you. Okay thank you. Councillor Steeds. Yes could I could I reiterate what's been said because I used to be on at that committee for Surrey and was taken for long walks across the high-wheeled at the time and exactly what Councillor White has said it is most beautiful landscape they want to help farmers they want to keep everything as beautiful as they can and I absolutely did not see one electric pylon anywhere when I was doing the walk it is the most beautiful and I also recommend this document to the to the council thank you. Okay thank you so if there's nothing else are we happy to agree to adopt the management plan as per the recommendation on page 383. Thank you very much that's come to the end of the agenda but I've got one really very urgent piece of business to raise and that really is to say that it's Vince's last planning policy committee. Shock horror and you're going to be embarrassed now but anyway I'm going to say it you know it's the end of an era and he's been such a help to me when I first started this committee because it was quite fraught when but still quite fraught but it was more fraught then and Vince has been really wonderful guide as he has for us all I know so just wanted to say that and I know he's going to miss this committee a great deal and all the 482 pages of the agenda so that was it really thank you and on that you don't want to say well do you want to say anything. It's not my last meeting here because I'm not going until the about 6th of September will be my last day of service but obviously coming to the end of the cycle of meetings which I'll be servicing so I'll be here for SNR next week and as I said to Catherine last year there was a special planning policy committee arranged at short notice in August so I'll never say never subject to that but thank you chair for your comments and I will be around as I say for those last few weeks but I've enjoyed it I can't say managing the webcast has been my most favourite piece of the job as they say but it's largely worked and I've enjoyed it and I will miss you all as I say when I get to the end of that road in September but I've got a little bit of time yet so I'll say my goodbye is nearer then thanks. So we'll have an emergency planning policy committee in August that's alright. I feel you escaped. Okay well that was it really so whatever the time is 9.23. Pardon. Oh no it's very good isn't it for all this lot yeah well that's down to Vince. Okay thank you very much good night. (audience laughing)