Transcript

Good afternoon, Councillors, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this meeting of Buckinghamshire Council, central Buckinghamshire area planning committee. I'm Michael Rand, chairman of this committee. Please note that the meeting will be webcast and the press and public can see and hear the meeting through the webcast if they so wish. In the unlikely event that there is a technical issue with the webcast, the meeting will be paused to see if the issues can be resolved. Agenda items have been published in accordance with the usual practice. Please note some housekeeping points. Please turn off your mobile phones or keep the men silent during the meeting. Laptops and tablets should be used only to access the agenda and report packs for today's meeting. You should refrain from using them for general internet access. Please raise your hands at the appropriate time if you wish to speak. I will make a note of the hands as they are raised and take them in that order when I see them. Please remember to turn your microphones on before you speak and off once you're finished. In the unlikely event of a fire alarm, please use the nearest fire exit and assemble in the car park outside the front of the main entrance as you exit the building. Agenda item 1 is the appointment of vice-chairman. At this point, I'd like to thank Councillor Newcombe. Richard, thank you very much for the able assistance and support that you've given me over the last three years. Thank you very much. I would like to appoint Councillor Paul Irwin as Vice-Chairman of the Central Planning, Buckinghamshire Area Planning Committee for this ensuing year. Unfortunately, Councillor Irwin isn't here to take up the position. Unfortunately, he's not very well. Agenda item 2. Apologies. Do we have any apologies for this meeting? Yes, we've got three apologies, Chairman. Councillor Brown, Councillor Collins and Councillor Irwin, as you mentioned, have just given apologies. Agenda item 3. Do we agree to approve the minutes held on the 18th of May and the 15th of May 2004 as a correct record? Three. Item 4. Do any members present wish to declare an interest to the committee before beginning considering the application? No, thank you. We will now consider the officer's report and I will first clarify the way in which each application will be considered. Firstly, the Planning Officer will introduce the application with any relevant updates. Members will then hear any public speaking statements in the following order. Council and local members, parish, town council representatives, objectors, supporters and agents or applicants. After the public speaking statements have been heard, members are able to ask speakers for clarification on matters raised in their statement and these must be addressed through myself as the Chairman. I'll then ask members first if they have any technical questions of the officers. Following this, the entire committee will then discuss the application. Members may seek further clarification from officers on points regarding the application, points raised by speakers in the main debate. Officers will respond to issues and questions raised by members. The committee will then make a decision by vote. Members will need to propose and second their recommendations. Now we move on to item

1. This is the construction of a multi-use games area, known as a mug-up, with permitted perimeters, fencing and floodlights. New linked paths between facilities and access and coordination of a soil bund. This is on page 7 of your agenda pack. I will now ask Andy MacDougall to introduce the application. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. Good afternoon, members. As Michael said, this application is for Oak Green School and the construction of a multi-use games area, known as a mugger, with permitted fencing, floodlights, a new linked path between the facility and access and the creation of a soil bund. This item is brought to you this afternoon because the council are a landowner and thus the decision by you ensures transparency in the planning process. In terms of report updates, I'd like to highlight just some minor revisions necessary to the following conditions. Condition 5 should read Switched off in the first occasion of the final sentence. Condition 6, an operational clause is to be included. The condition should thus read The development shall be implemented and operated strictly in accordance with the agreed measures detailed in the outdoor LED lighting design document from Luminescence Pro lighting systems dated March 2024. Condition 7, a trigger should be included for fence installation. Therefore, the condition should read Prior to first use, the primitive fencing, including gates around the mugger, shall be installed in accordance with the approved details as set out on the approved plans. The fencing shall not thereafter be altered unless authorized in writing by the local planning authority. I'm also taking this opportunity to suggest a new condition, which would be Condition 8, and that should be attached to ensure that the bund is retained as an ecology zone and not at an area of play. I therefore suggest a condition which reads The ecology earth bund hereby approved shall at no time be used by children as an extension to the school play area or school field and shall be retained in the ecology zone in perpetuity. The reason being to prevent the harm caused to the amenities of neighbours in accordance with Policy BE3 of the Vail of Aylesbury local plan and the MPPF. Moving on to the slide presentation. This application is located adjacent to the north-eastern boundary of Oak Green Primary School and Nursery on Oak Green in a residential area of Aylesbury and comprises of an area of open field adjacent to one of the three car parks of the school. In terms of constraints, the site is not located with any designated green belt, national landscape or conservation area. There are no protected trees or listed buildings on or adjacent to the site. Here's an existing layout versus a proposed layout. The existing layout is on the left. As you can see, the proposed layout is on the right with the location of the mugger and the bund. The mugger would be a synthetic turf court measuring approximately 34.75 metres in length by 18.25 metres in width with perimeter fencing and four 6.9 metre high floodlights. There will be areas of hard standing and paths linking the new court to the existing access points. No trees on site are to be affected. The bund would be located to the south-west of the mugger - should be south-east actually, sorry, apologies about that - of the mugger and would be graded at 1 to 2.5. Its maximum height would be approximately 2 metres. It's not to be used as an area of play, rather it is to be in an ecology zone. The condition is applied in this respect. The new facilities will be available for the use by the community in the evenings and weekends but the main use will be for the school. The proposed hours of operation would be Monday to Friday 9am to 8.15pm, Saturday 10am to 6pm, Sunday 10am to 2pm and it being closed on bank holidays. Here's some details around the fencing around the mugger. Fencing will generally be three metres in height with four metre sections behind the goal areas. The fencing is to be RAL code 6005. This is a moss green. I've taken the opportunity to download a swab off the internet to highlight that specific colour. Here are the details of the bund. It will be a maximum height of 2 metres and as I said previously it will not be an area of play, rather reserved as an ecology zone. Next couple of slides are some photos. Here are some photos within the site, taking with arrows representing each general direction. Top left is the entrance into the site and then you've got north east, south east etc around the playing fields. And three photos taken outside of the site looking into the site towards the area of the bund. In terms of assessment, the NPPF describes the need to provide a social, recreational, cultural facilities and services to meet local community needs. This is conformity with relevant felt policies. The planning statement includes that the mugger would provide a school with an opportunity to develop a broader range of curriculum opportunities and would increase the high quality sporting facilities for pupils and community. Sports England was consulted as a statutory consortee and raised no objections. They considered the proposal to bring benefits and welcome the intention to make the facility available for community use. However they do confirm that there is no need for a community use agreement to be in place but they do encourage the school to enter into such an agreement. We would be unable to impose a condition to enforce this as it would be deemed unreasonable but the school is here today and we'll hear that point. In terms of scale, the proposal would be consistent with the scale of development on site and in the surrounding area. The mugger would offer all year round use resulting in increased sporting opportunities. The new flood lighting would facilitate use into the evenings. It is acknowledged that while these changes will have an impact upon the character of the area, when taking into account the lighting assessment and the proposed hours of operation, it is considered that this will represent only limited harm and these would be outweighed by the wider benefits of the project. The management plan covering the day-to-day maintenance of the new facilities, public access and overall responsibilities will be required prior to bringing the new facility into use. This element is secured by condition. In terms of noise, a noise management plan has been submitted following consultation with the council of environmental health team is considered subject to the hours of use being controlled by condition alongside mitigation. The impact upon neighbouring occupiers would not be significantly detrimental. It is acknowledged that the new fencing of various heights and the additional lighting will be visible. The overall impact, however, is satisfactory and the new additional features will not appear alien when considered against the use of the site. Shielding of flood lights is again controlled by condition. The school currently has three parking areas within its boundary, all accessed off Oak Green. There are no changes proposed to the existing parking arrangements. To ensure that there is sufficient parking on site for the evening and weekend use, a car parking management plan is required. Again, this is secured by condition. The recommendation before you today is for conditional permission set out in the tail of the report and the amendments outlined by myself at the beginning of the speech. Thank you. Thank you Andrew for that. We now have two speakers from the school. One is Chris Palmer and the other Nick Marshall. If I could invite them to the table here. You have three minutes to address the committee. Thank you. The three minutes will start once you start. Press the button and you will be able to answer any questions you may have in the Q&A box. Thank you. Thank you everybody and thank you Andrew for that briefing. Yes, my name is Chris Palmer. I'm the PE lead at the school and this is Nick Marshall. He is the deputy head teacher at Oak Green School. As you have seen from the proposal, the plans are to firstly improve the program. Based in Southcott, many of our children have very limited access to any outside of school sporting opportunities. It is our aim that the facility will be used primarily for those groups who have very little money to invest in their children and their families to access sport more often. We've already made arrangements with partners such as England Handball, England Volleyball and others like Bucks Cricket for them to use the facility if it is given permission today. We are very, very keen for the idea of the moment to carry out further more because it gives us an all year round opportunity to provide these sporting offerings and also on top of that it helps give us an opportunity to improve the well-being of our children throughout the school day, through play time and lunch times. We are a three form entry school with a capacity of really only a two form entry school so our playground in particular is incredibly congested during these winter months. By having this opportunity to have the mugger, we can relieve that pressure and help people using that space and on top of that we can provide more offerings for playground games which currently we cannot do in winter months because of safety and sheer congestion. We are very keen for the local community to use the facility, as I've mentioned before we've spoken with local national governing bodies but also at LEAP who are providing an awful lot of initiatives for us to try and improve the facility further by giving us opportunities to access grants for sporting equipment such as goals or nets and so forth. We really would like to also add on this is that the community is in significant need for an opportunity or something so significant like this and we would only look to try and lease it out for partners who we know are looking to improve the general community ethos that we have. We have a very diverse community where we can often have moments where it's quite secular where we've got some sort of religious background and so forth that don't necessarily interact and we would like to give this opportunity so that we can build a community around Oak Green, provide more opportunities for cohorts such as women and girls and furthermore we are very excited about possibly being the main focus of this community and this project. So we're open to any questions or queries you may have about the logistics about what we're planning to do but again thank you for having us at your meeting we look forward to hearing your questions if they're coming. Thank you very much for your presentation. Do any members of the committee have questions to ask? Councillor Smith this is questions of clarification. Yes yes thank you chair. It's a wonderful scheme it seems seems really well well needed and excellent. I was wondered about the the Bund area and and it's been described that that's it seems a great addition presumably it's to try and shelter the houses that back onto the the mugger and in the presentation that we heard earlier it was going to be restricted so that it wasn't a play area. How in a busy school how could you protect an area like that so that it doesn't become over time a busy play area? Yeah as you quite rightly said that the main focus is to provide you know an area of an ecology and what we're looking to try and do is make it into more of a outdoor classroom environment so that it can be a quiet zone so there's often you know as you all know you know certain children may not necessarily want to hair around the playground they might want to have some quiet time and this would be a perfect opportunity to use this facility any seating and things like that would be looked at getting some very natural sort of benches or seats or something similar to that so that people can just enjoy the space enjoy the flowers the bees the you know insects that would sort of go there in terms of how we sort of deter people from accessing that area during play time and things you know we do have a number of members of staff at lunch time and at break time that could facilitate and encourage them in other areas the fact the matter is we would have the mugger there which would have you know games and things to keep getting children engaged and things and hold their attention but similarly when it's in the summer months where we've got free access of all the field there are lots of different activities that are carried out throughout the whole field so although it's a significant amount of land that's being used we still are very very you know grateful fact that we still have an awful lot of space that children can enjoy and facilitate you know it might be things like you know some of our year six pupils carrying out a you know a book sort of story time or there might be some sort of nice kind of calming music environments and things like this it'll be very much a place of calm but we feel that is except it you know it's an essential part of the program in order to actually quite rightly said shield some of the um you know noise pollution that might occur from from from the use of the mugger but also in terms of you know shielding it means it's as as wonderful as a mugger might be it can be a little bit of a you know a fund with an ecology and flowers is a lot more appealing than a metal fence or things so you kind of thank you and if i can indulge chair it's it was really um um my concern would be for residents we're much more concerned about kind of active hours evenings when there isn't teachers to police an area like this it's a wonderful idea and it's a fantastic thing to do but um as we as i mentioned we're going to get some you know trusted partners to um lease out you know help with regards to using this facility so it won't be a case of like you get many other sort of maybe say five aside environments where you would get a group of friends who are just coming along to have a kick about and you know a shout there will be very much a targeted theme to all of these things and each of these people would have um you know coaches who again are trusted partners that would have overall responsibility of of the people that they have within their groups so there would be a sort of an agreement within the leasing agreement that the access would be only for obviously the mugger facility um and obviously the use of the uh you know ecology zone would be completely out of bounds for for the use of during this period hopefully that helps you chancellor chapel funnily enough one of my questions was going to be the same as greg's order but i think you've you've answered it but looking at paragraph two six in the report on page eight and it's there where they get the hours of opening and closing and the paragraph immediately above says you know to be available for use by local community in the evenings and weekends but when i look at the timings on a saturday stops at six so there's nobody there in the evening and again on sunday at two so and bank holidays is not open at all so i'm trying to work out if that is being very restrictive for the community or whether you're doing that to police it better can you explain it a little bit better so that was the guidance given to the school through the planning application um consultants that we used um now as the as andrews highlighted there was um you know no call for a sort of leasing agreement per se but it's essentially for an opportunity for us to sort of see how things go um in the you know first year of operations um and i agree completely you know we want to give as many opportunities as we can and if that means increasing the hours then you know we could look to facilitate that um but you know in the first instance we want to ensure that we've got the right partners um using using the site and if those partners um you know then in turn can recommend us to other partners and so forth and there's a there's a need for it for extended hours and things we certainly something that we could look to facilitate but you know essentially that was the guidance that was given with regards to the application um that we received so um you know i'm all for it being available beyond those hours it but first and foremost we wanted to make sure that we're we're managing it um so that it's being successful in use throughout those hours and if we can then obviously we would love to do that as we go on just to clarify chairman the planning application is there with the algorithm written down if you were to extend it it would need fresh planning application i believe maybe andy can help us there uh yeah you in order to vary them you could do a section 73 uh to vary particular conditions and so you could seek to vary the the hours of use um from a planning perspective i think there's a kind of a balance that needs to be applied between um getting the community use facility outside of school hours and minimizing disruption and things in neighbors because certainly in winter months less so probably in summer months but the later it goes into the evening the more obvious the flood lights are and things so there is that balancing exercise but certainly as the school pointed out um if it's found that it's it's popular and those extension of hours is needed the 73 could be submitted and we would kind of weigh the planning merits of it i ask that question chairman so that you know the the what the procedure of what you need to do if you do need to extend it thank you council await thank you um unfortunately i'm going to do a variation on the theme again um this out of hours and infinite so when when it's basically been leased or rented out of hours will there be a member of the caretaking staff on site at that point no problem so my my concern is obviously um light pollution and everything else because i i have a couple of industrial estates in my area and um but basically at night if the lights not turned off it turns into an airport um in turn and i'm just conscious about the fight of um controlling these lights are not left on and they're not left on all night i mean obviously your lighting report is excellent because most of it is basically surface-led um which is an excellent condition everything else no problem but i'm just obviously yeah if you just confirm that obviously it will be shut down on a regular basis so as you saw regards the timings that um the lightings will be um basically on a time so it will not be needed to be it can be manually overwritten but it will be on a timing system um so that there will be a sort of a slight overlap between five to ten minutes after that final cutoff time and then you know it it goes with them some security lighting for those that are on the facility so that they can make their way to the car park safety and so forth yeah but thank you for your question could i just jump in on on that just point you in the direction of condition five um within that condition does say that all flood lights will be switched off within 15 minutes of last use per day and shall be switched off during periods of nil use it did but it didn't tell me who who'd be responsible for it that was that was the point that that was the point i was getting at really yeah thank you for that any further questions thank you very much for coming thank you and answering the questions of course yes you may resume your seats right are there any questions of clarification from the officers officer can cancel await um the lighting report um the mugger and again i've just given myself a crash course on illuminescence i love that word uh the mug is obviously surface the netball is surface but the tennis is horizontal is that i'm presuming the reason for that it's position of the ball on the plane or is there any or is anything else i'm missing i suspect you're probably writing i mean it's a technical document drawn up by experts using best practice so yeah okay no problem that's right any other further questions or clarification no in that case we go through to debate counselor khan well first of all i mean i think it's a wonderful idea and i'm very reminded by the fact that if this wasn't uh bakimshah building we wouldn't be here today i think i would like to be privileged to propose that we accept this it's a wonderful idea very dearly needed in that area and it gives me immense pleasure to be able to propose and we should accept the officer's recommendation thank you for that chancellor thompson i should be happy to second that proposal thank you chancellor thompson any other further deep to actually debate in that case then uh sorry um so no further questions or to the debate at the debate so we move through to the vote we have a proposal and a seconder those in favor oh that's unanimous chairman so the uh the application is approved uh according to the conditions in the report and with the additional condition updated by uh andy just in his presentation thank you members as you have been made aware due to the calling of the general election the availability of appropriate meeting spaces has been impacted due to the need to use use them for election work purposes the meeting on the 3rd of july 2024 has therefore being cancelled the next scheduled meeting of the committee will be now be on the 31st of july thank you for attending a safe journey home or wherever you're going