The monthly meeting of Bridgend Council’s planning committee was held last week. The meeting itself was fairly short as there was only one application up for discussion (later deferred). You can watch the whole thing here.
One key item on the agenda was a report outlining a series of changes to BCBC’s planning code of practice (pdf).
A meeting to discuss amendments was held in September, but changes have been planned since before the pandemic.
In summary:
- The number of objections from members of the public needed to automatically refer applications to the committee will change. It was agreed that 2 or more objections will continue to be required for minor/household applications, but the threshold will increase to 5 or more objections for major planning applications.
- Repeat objections from members of the same household will be counted as a single objection with some flexibility allowed to account for different opinions within the same household.
- Petitions will be considered on the strength/merits of the objections raised and the weight of objection to a particular proposal rather than the number of signatures alone (councils will soon need to introduce a public petitions system as a result of changes to the law in Wales).
- The amount of time allocated to objectors speaking at public meetings will be increased from 3 minutes to 5 minutes. Where two objectors want to speak, they’ll be allotted 2 minutes 30 seconds each as long as they have different points to raise.
- If an application is deferred following a debate in committee, the public won’t be invited to speak for a second time unless there’s an amendment or a new consultation process.
- Applicants and agents won’t be required to speak at planning committee meetings if there are no objections to an application.
- Members of the planning committee will be allowed to ask “technical/practical” questions to applicants and agents at public meetings.
- No representations will be accepted after a deadline of end-of-business on the Tuesday before a planning committee meeting unless they are “materially significant”.
- There’s an agreement that site visits should continue. The Site Visit Panel will be scrapped and all site visits should start at the same time (09:30 the Wednesday before a planning committee meeting). Virtual site visits – due to pandemic restrictions – will continue for the foreseeable future.
