Agenda item

Gareth Price – Head of Law and Standards

The Head of Service explained that officers took a report to the Full Council AGM in May on the scheme of delegation but noted that since then there has been a few issues on the current operating scheme and advised Members that the report would look to address those anomalies. The officer gave Committee a brief overview on the review for recommended amendments.

The first change mentioned was the powers of the Chief Executive as Returning Officer for the elections, which are delegated to the Chief Executive under a different part of the constitution relating to the allocation of responsibilities. From the recent election, a Community Council was inquorate so they looked to use powers for temporary measures so they could co-opt. It occurred to officers that the powers delegated to the Chief Executive elsewhere in the constitution were not reflected in the scheme of delegation in the current constitution. Therefore as a point of clarity, it was necessary to update the scheme of delegation to include those election powers. There were also some other minor changes to reflect the re-alignment of services to different Heads of Service.

The one substantive change that the Officers asked the Members to recommend to Council was to make the change in scheme of delegation for planning decisions. At present, all planning applications in relation to council owned property and corporate assets go to planning committee; the former Head of Regeneration was conflicted as the corporate property manager was also in charge of development and control and felt it was inappropriate for an officer to determine a planning application and also be on the asset management side. Therefore, all planning applications in relation to corporate property and assets had to be referred to Planning Committee for determination, regardless of how minor the applications were.

The transfer of the corporate property function to another Head of Service, following the senior management restructure, provides an opportunity to give planning officers the power to deal with minor applications relating to council assets and property. The client role for assets and property has now been transferred to People, Policy and Transformation, and that service area is now responsible for any planning application in relation to corporate property and assets. The Head of Economic Regeneration has the responsibility for discharging the separate development control function. The separating of those functions would remove the need for minor applications to go to Planning Committee and could be dealt with by the officers under the scheme of delegation.

With more significant planning applications, which fall outside the officer scheme of delegation, they would still go to Planning Committee. Members were assured that the call in process would not change, where Members can refer any respective officer delegated decisions to the Planning Committee, providing valid planning reasons to do so.

The officers welcomed questions from the committee.

Committee raised the following points:

·         The Chair mentioned that in the past, elected Members’ planning applications on their own homes would go to Planning Committee; and queried if this would still apply following the change.

In response, the Head of Law and Standards confirmed that nothing would change in terms of the planning application process, where any elected member has a personal interest in the outcome, whether as applicant or objector. They would still have to be referred to Planning Committee for determination. For the sake of transparency, the same would apply for internal applications where an officer submits an application and has a close association with the planning department. Members were informed that those type of planning applications would still go to the Planning Committee regardless of being minor or significant.

·         Councillor K. Thomas noted that she experienced difficulty hearing the discussion through Microsoft teams as did a few of the other Members who joined the meeting remotely, they reported fading in and out on the microphones.

The Chair referred Members that the minutes of the meeting would reflect the report provided and if any Members have questions on the same; the Head of Law and Standards would clarify any points for them.

Recommendations

The Democratic Services Committee considered the officer’s recommendations and accepted the Revised Officer Scheme of Delegation with the requirement to update the Planning Scheme of Delegation and to reflect the Chief Executive’s powers to discharge specific functions in relation to elections.

The Committee recommended to full Council meeting on Tuesday 19 July that the revised officer Scheme of Delegation be formally approved and adopted and the constitution be updated accordingly.