City of York Council’s existing planning system is holding up applications for new homes, a senior councillor has said – amid claims a new bookshop would not have been approved under proposed changes.
Cllr Michael Pavlovic, Labour’s planning lead said the amount of time it was taking to decide some applications was delaying the processing of others, including for new homes.
But Liberal Democrat Cllr Christian Vassie said Museum Street’s new Topping & Company store would have been refused if changes proposed to speed up decision-making were already in place.
The comments follow the unveiling of proposals to shake-up the way planning applications are handled by the council.
Proposed reforms would see the council’s planning committee B scrapped, with its functions rolled into planning committee A.
The latter would be renamed the planning committee and become the council’s sole body for councillors to debate and vote on applications.
Changes proposed as part of the shake-up would also see the amount of applications which go before the committee curtailed while more would be decided by council officers.
- Outline or full applications for developments of 40 homes or more would continue to go to the committee.
- Those lodged by councillors, chief officers or the council itself could be referred for a committee decision and its chair and vice would be able to call some in.
- Plans would go before the committee if senior council officials deem it necessary but the rest would be decided by officers.
The proposals have been drawn up amid changes proposed by the Labour Government whose Planning and Infrastructure Bill is currently making its way through Parliament.
Save officers’ time
A council report stated the proposals aimed to align the local system with reforms currently proposed by the Government including more consistency on which applications should be decided by officers.
Councillors who discussed the proposals on Wednesday, 3 September heard four per cent of all the applications lodged in the year up to March, 54, were decided by committees.
Four of their decisions went against officer recommendations, including one application which was refused but later allowed by the Planning Inspectorate on appeal.
The Audit and Governance Committee heard 22 applications decided in line with officers recommendations out of the 54 total would not have had required a vote under the proposed system.
Council planning lead Becky Eades said the changes would save senior officers around a week’s worth of work, freeing up time to make decisions on applications more quickly.
She added the proposals were not about stopping the democractic process but were designed to speed up decision-making.
Not building more homes
Planning executive member Cllr Pavlovic said they also followed feedback from councillors who said they had spent more than an hour debating applications they already knew they would approve.
The Labour executive member said: “When I meet with developers and the public and they ask why we’re not building more homes, I say we can’t because we can’t process the applications.
“We’ve passed our Local Plan and our intention was to signal that York was going to start building, we’ve got applications coming through the pre-application process and dealing with them is taking up so much time.
“These are a series of proposals which are going to be a way of addressing these local circumstances.”
But Liberal Democrat Cllr Vassie said proposals including officers deciding applications for listed building consents regardless of call-ins would have seen the Topping & Company bookshop turned down.
The listed building consent application for the store was recommended for refusal by council planning officers on heritage grounds.
It was called in by Labour’s Guildhall ward councillor Rachel Melly and the council’s planning committee b overturned the recommendation and approved the application amid an outpouring of public support.
Cllr Vassie told the audit and governance committee: “We know the value of having elected councillors involved in decision making.
“If the Topping & Company application had not been called in there would be no new jobs and an old building would be standing empty.”
Other objectors included Green activist and former councillor Andy D’Agorne, who said the changes would result in councillors losing touch with residents’ views.
He added fast-tracking applications would increase the risk of building badly-designed houses.
Liberal Democrat committee chair Andrew Hollyer said the changes were premature given the Government’s proposals had not yet been finalised.
He added they could prove counter-productive if they result in residents being less involved in the planning process.
