Agenda item

J Doe introduced the report

Cllr Rogers said that he believed there was a policy of holding back CIL money from being spent and asked if J Doe could expand on that.

J Doe replied that none of the CIL received has been spent, A proportion goes to Hemel and Bourne End Councillors as these ae not parished areas. CIL is used to deliver infrastructure, but infrastructure is expensive. The policy is to amass enough to do something meaningful before distributing the CIL receipts. The governance procedure was approved by Cabinet. There will shortly be look at infrastructure pressures and members will be involved in this and decisions regarding how to spend the CIL in about April of next year.

Cllr Birnie asked if some of the money had already been dispensed to parishes.

J Doe said that parishes are entitled to 15% of receipts. Twice annual payments are made to parishes and non parished areas are held in ward members ‘pots’ for local decision making on how it is spent. 

Cllr Anderson said that the committee scrutinised this process about two years ago.

Cllr Silwal said that in Grovehill they receive 25% because they have a neighbourhood plan.

Cllr Riddick asked why the figures on appeals were a dramatic turn around this quarter as previous quarters have been strong.

J Doe replied that you should not take one quarter out of context, as skewing this quarter are the three appeals against conditions which aren’t a regular occurrence and officers  would be monitoring closely to see if there is a recurring trend.

Cllr Birnie asked if there were any costs awarded against us?

J Doe responded that he was not aware of any.

Cllr Birnie said that he was aware DMC has a number of new councillors and that he was surprised there had been a number of appeals against conditions, as these are normally straightforward and approved by officers. He asked if perhaps more training for members would be in order.

J Doe agreed that training is always a good thing. Care must be exercised when attaching conditions. They have to be relevant and the development must actually be unacceptable without the conditions. He said he felt it was too early to say if it was a consequence of the new committee make up because there is long lead in to appeals. Indeed, the results may actually apply to delegated decisions.

Cllr Riddick said that not having any costs against us seems like a slight victory, because if we were so wrong, we would have more awards of costs against us. 

J Doe replied that you need to look at the data for the whole year as costs are not often awarded against us. We will review this on an annual basis.

Cllr Beauchamp wanted to know that if CIL was awarded to wards, how do ward councillor access funding?

J Doe explained that when setting up the system, guidance was provided to ward members for Hemel Hempstead, and Bourne End and he said that he would circulate that guidance again.

Cllr Rogers said that he had received a lot of comments from residents regarding online consultation and the difficulty of having to put in a lot of data before making a comment. He added that this could be a barrier to the number of contributions to consultations.

J Doe replied that we are encouraging people to submit comments online as it uploads direct to the system and his main concern was people who write or email in, as this is not uploaded to the webpage owing to labour constraints. He said that all comments were taken into account but that he would take that point away to discuss with the Group Manager for Development Management.  J Doe explained that a new back office system was in place which had been live for a few days.  This should be making it as easy as possible for people to comment online and to register a ‘My Dacorum’ account and to comment on the Residents Portal as well.

Cllr Birnie suggested that this is something that should go in the Dacorum Digest.

Cllr Timmis said that she had heard from Parish councils who have tried to access information and found it missing and that in two instances over the past few weeks there had been insufficient information for them to make a decision at their PC meetings.  Cllr Timmis added that she also received complaints from residents finding it hard to get online to make comments. She added that if you email in you do not even know if it has been received and suggested that it was not unreasonable for planning officers to have an automatic response to emails which would acknowledge the information had been received.

Cllr Sutton said that these issues are being discussed already and work has been done to ensure the system is user friendly.

J Doe said he would take all the points away and that asked if Cllr Timmis could send details of where the information is incomplete as an application cannot be validated until all information received.

Cllr Ransley said that Tring TC rejected three plans over last few months because they were incomplete and  a decision could not be made.

J Doe once again asked to be provided with all information so that he could look into this.

The report was noted