b. Meeting planning consultation deadlines

SALC often receives enquiries about what local councils can do when they are consulted on a planning application and required by the Local Planning Authority (LPA) to submit their response before their own council's scheduled meeting.

There are a number of options:

• seek an extension  if a meeting is scheduled within a reasonable timeframe but beyond the deadline set for the response, a short extension is an obvious first consideration and prompt liaise with your local planning department may solve, or at least, ease the situation.
  

• convene an extraordinary meeting the chair of the council could convene an extraordinary meeting (eg: one that is not scheduled) at any time, and this could be done to allow consideration of the planning matter, together with any other items of business considered necessary.  The usual three clear days' notice is required and other rules relating to meetings apply.

• Delegation a meeting is required to make all council decisions, unless a particular function (such as planning) has been delegated under s.101 Local Government Act 1972, to a committee, a sub-committee or an officer.  The decision to delegate must be made at a meeting of full council

• Committee a planning committee can be very beneficial for several reasons, including being easier to convene meetings with fewer members/quorum, and the members developing expertise in this area.  Furthermore, it is possible for committee meetings to be convened at short notice if necessary, providing this option has been selected from model standing orders.  To gain the full benefit, it is recommended planning committees are given decision-making authority.    Membership of the committee, the chair and terms of reference will need to be agreed at full council.  Even where there is a committee, full council can still deal with planning matters.  This might be necessary or desired if, for example, an application is received at a time that better suits inclusion on the agenda of a council meeting, or perhaps an application for a large-scale or sensitive development.

• Officer in many parish councils the clerk is the sole employee.  We are not aware of councils in Suffolk that have delegated full planning responsibilities to officers but within certain criteria this could be a good option.  
  
  Such delegation might be limited, for example to applications of a particular type, such as porches or small-scale extensions where there are no obvious contentious issues. It might also apply where an extension to the reply deadline is not granted, there is no planning committee and a (quorate) council meeting could not be convened in time to meet the deadline.

  Equally, the Clerk’s responsibility could be limited to deciding that an application is one which the Council would not wish to submit any observations on at all.

  In either case it may be considered appropriate for the Clerk (or other officer) to be required to liaise with the Chair of the Council (or Chair of Planning) before responding on behalf of a council, providing a degree of ‘check and balance’, as well as reassurance to the officer.

  This is different to the practice of e-mailing applications to members and the Clerk submitting a response based on councillor comments, which is essentially unlawful. If councillors need to be involved in the decision, then this must be done in a meeting (para 39(1), Schedule 12, Local Government Act 1972).