Question
Shinfield Parish Council’s Planning Committee of 6th June 2019 received an update on Planning Enforcement in the parish. The list consisted of 19 breaches. Of these two had reached the stage of a Planning Enforcement Notice being issued and one had between closed due to submission of a planning application. A review of the list demonstrated that all 19 breaches had been in existence for considerable periods of time, for example 84951 Derrydene, or had not been inspected for a long period after a complaint had been made. In the case of enforcement item 1402 Mallards (Spencer’s Wood Post Office) Enforcement was granted due to the applicants failed appeal and yet officers continue to negotiate with the owner who is delaying conforming with the actual permission granted, with no relief for the neighbours in sight. These processes do not seem to result in any progress to rectify breaches of planning permissions.
Can the Executive confirm the Key Performance Indicators for managing Planning Enforcement issues and the criteria for screening out complaints?
Minutes:
Question
Shinfield Parish Council’s Planning Committee of 6th June 2019 received an update on Planning Enforcement in the parish. The list consisted of 19 breaches. Of these two had reached the stage of a Planning Enforcement Notice being issued and one had between closed due to submission of a planning application. A review of the list demonstrated that all 19 breaches had been in existence for considerable periods of time, for example 84951 Derydene, or had not been inspected for a long period after a complaint had been made. In the case of enforcement item 1402 Mallards (Spencers’ Wood Post Office) Enforcement was granted due to the applicants failed appeal and yet Officers continue to negotiate with the owner who is delaying conforming with the actual permission granted, with no relief for the neighbours in sight. These processes do not seem to result in any progress to rectify breaches of planning permissions.
Can the Executive confirm the Key Performance Indicators for managing Planning Enforcement issues and the criteria for screening out complaints?
Answer
The Council’s Local Planning Enforcement Plan prioritises alleged breaches of planning control in “high”, “medium” and “low” categories. The document can be found on the Council’s website. The list of 18 cases (not 19 as stated) outstanding in Shinfield are all “medium” or “low” priority which means the complainant will get an initial response within 10 working days or 28 days respectively. In the listed cases this has occurred. The Parish Council has not contacted the Enforcement Team to our knowledge at any stage asking for an update on any particular case. The Council currently has 261 enforcement cases on hand, distributed mainly between three Officers. There is a target of 60% to close cases within 8 weeks and this is normally exceeded. There are those cases that end up with formal enforcement notices being served and they sometimes go to appeal or end up in court.
Now turning to the details in the question:
· On review of the list of 18 outstanding cases 3 or 5 may be closed as they have now been resolved.
· Derydene has been passed to the current Officer as unfortunately the previous Officer retired; probably fortunately for him. A site visit is planned but due to annual sickness this has not been undertaken. Looking at Google maps and aerial photographs it does appear that this site has existed for some time but we are taking further action on that.
· Item 1402 Mallards enforcement notice. Having looked at that last week and trying to get a better understanding of it myself, and the local Councillor Councillor Munro, spent most of yesterday morning with residents from both sides and the owner of the property. This is quite a complex case and I do not think even in my working life I have ever seen anything as complex as this case. I genuinely think that we can get a resolution having spoken to residents, as I said, on either side and the owner of the one-stop shop/post office/his own property. Myself and Councillor Munro have agreed to work with the owner of the property to the satisfaction of the residents either side to come to a resolution. But it is Andrew quite difficult and as I said I have never seen anything like it and it is complex; but we will get a resolution that satisfies the residents.
Supplementary Question
You mentioned that you were not aware of the Parish Council commentary to the enforcement process. Would Officers be prepared to increase the rating through discussion with the Parish Council? You mentioned that we only had “medium” and “low” criticality items. 1402 strikes me as slightly worse than “medium” or “low” and perhaps did not bag the level of response that we needed.
So my supplementary question is would Officers be willing to review the criticality of these issues so that we can be assured that they are being treated with the appropriate level of performance?
Supplementary Answer
I am absolutely sure we will because Jason Varley, who heads up that Team, came with us yesterday to meet residents and he also understands the complex nature of this one. But as you know I absolutely thing if we are not working with the Parish Council it is going to make our life twice as hard. So yes.