Transcript

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Good evening everybody. Welcome to today's Extraordinary Planning Committee. First item on the agenda is notification to those present at the meeting will be recorded and streamed online. Oh, the first part of the meeting will, anyway. Second item on the agenda, apologies for absence. Catharine? Thank you, Chair. I have Councillor Spoors, Councillor Shakehaft, and Councillor Wildgust. Thank you. Any declarations of interest by members and officers? I'll declare an interest from myself, Councillor Dale's, and Councillor Melton for members of Trent Valley Internal Drainage Board. Any other interest? Okay. Before I get to part one, well, there's no items on part one anyway, just want to welcome Tom to the meeting, Councillor Tom Smith. So welcome back to Planning Tom. I think you were on before previously, weren't you? Yeah. So welcome. Good to see you. There are no items for decision. Part two, items for information, implications of new evidence on planning appeals in relation to applications, and the two applications are listed there, Lisa. Thank you, Chairman. You'll note from the report that this isn't a planning application. It's an update following the council's decision in relation to the two solar farms and receiving of the appellant's appeal information quite recently. So for those who were on planning committee, I will do a very rough summary. And for those of you who have returned, it will still be quite limited in the amount of information, but hopefully you'll get enough information and to be able to make a decision. So it does relate to solar farms, and I have got a number of the slides here, but I'm going to focus mainly on those where the changes are. So if you can remember, it was two sites. So as you can see, you've got the area in red, and that was the Knapthorpe scheme, and the area in blue, which was the Muscombe Wood scheme. And the proposal was for solar -- or is for solar panels and associated infrastructure. In relation to the Knapthorpe proposal, it's as is the case for both of them. Very large scale, 49.9 megawatt scheme, and you can see the location where all the panels were proposed and you considered last time. So in relation to the changes compared to what you considered previously to this scheme, if you focus on this area here, so as part of the appeal, the appellant's are proposed to remove some of the panels in this location. All other matters remain the same. So I'm going to jump to the corn ton scheme. So if you recollect, we did the site visit where we stood in the back garden of the neighbour, and you walked along the rather muddy track, and again, large scheme, and as you noted from the earlier slide, they are right next door to one another. So in relation to what was considered, you've got the panels as shown here. And focusing in this area, you'll note that that whole field of solar panels has been removed as part of the appeal proceedings. If you can recollect from the recent appeal that we've had for the battery energy storage system, where that, in officer's opinion, had far greater change, and we challenged the inspector accepting it. The inspector considered that it didn't substantially change the scheme from what had originally been considered. So under the Wheatcroft principle, he was happy to accept it. As officers, we think again, and taking account of the other inquiry that we had for solar back in 2020, I think it was, where again, panels were removed, we're anticipating that the inspector will allow this, considering no injustice will be held. And as part of the notification to residents for both of the appeals, we will be highlighting the fact that the plans have been amended, and they will be able to respond to the planning inspector with any difference in their thoughts that they might have. So the report that you have in front of you that starts at page three of the agenda, sets out the summary of the considerations previously. It highlights the impact that officers consider, has resulted in relation to the changes. And it is purely there for information purposes, so that you're aware. Thank you, Chairman. Recommendation is that the report be noted, but does anybody have any questions? Councillor Salington. I have comments, really. I think there's very little change on this application. Yeah, here we are, again, to discuss what we already thought wasn't suitable. So I don't think there's sufficient change. I'm also not quite sure when only two months ago, at most, we were discussing the fact that we could have applicants here, applicants, agents, architects, objectors, residents, parish council, an absolute plethora of people to come here and speak. Yet, part of this is not going to be heard by the public. I think we need to be transparent, and I can't for the life of me, except it says some exempt information, understand why we're trying to avoid the public. This is a very, very big application. It's very important to the people who live there. And to hold it in private, I think, looks anything but transparent, and that concerns me. And-- [ Inaudible Remark ] Did you want to come in, so-- No, no, you said that. When the council is considering its response to an appeal that is going to a public inquiry and discussing the nature of that response, it has to be held in private because we will be giving the other side, if you like, the appellant, our grounds for our arguments. And that would not be in the best interest of this council, you or your constituents. I understand. Good. But this isn't that appeal yet. This isn't the appeal tonight, is it? No, it's not the appeal that we're considering the appeal. The appeal has been launched and it's been made and we're considering that-- So how are we considering this tonight when we didn't consider the best storage application? That went straight off to appeal. We did consider-- But it was a different application as I understand it. Yes, but we did consider that after the planning committee in-- it wasn't an exempt item but we discussed that. We were updating that but it wasn't in the public because we were discussing. Can you tell me if I go now? Because we were discussing matters for the appeal that this council was going to take. So it's not a really responsible contribution to this meeting to say that things that we should be discussing in private shouldn't be. Unfortunately, that's the way it is. So I'll move on. Thank you very much. So it is to be noted, any other questions or comments that don't relate to the appeal? OK. So agenda item four-- sorry, agenda item-- I want to get down to it. Agenda item five is exclusion of the press and public for the reasons to consider resolving that under section 100A brackets four of the local government act 1972, the public be excluded from the meeting for the following items of business on the grounds that they involve the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in part one of schedule 12A of the act. All those in favor? Any against? Unanimous. Thank you. That's unanimous. So I'm just waiting for YouTube to be turned off. [ Pause ]