Agenda item

(Report by the Monitoring Officer)

Councillor Tom Ashton, Chairman of the Planning Committee, introduced a report on a proposal to amend the Council’s Remote Meetings Protocol and Procedure Rules to introduce public speaking at remote meetings of the Planning Committee and adopt the revised procedures as the Public Speaking Scheme for physical meetings of the Planning Committee when resumed for the purposes of consistency.

The report stated that in response to the Covid-19 pandemic the Government had introduced legislation that permitted local authority meetings to take place by remote means until 7 May 2021.

At the time of introducing remote meetings, concerns had been raised regarding the effective application of public speaking rules at meetings of the Planning Committee.  In response, it had been agreed to suspend the public speaking procedures and replace them with the submission of written representations.

Having gained experience and knowledge of operating remote meetings and having had the opportunity to learn from authorities that operated public speaking, the Council was now in a stronger position to effectively implement public speaking at meetings of the Planning Committee.  It was therefore proposed to introduce public speaking from 9 March 2021 based on the protocol attached as an appendix to the report.

To provide consistency with public speaking at both remote and physical meetings of the Planning Committee, it was also recommended that the Public Speaking Protocol for physical meetings of the Planning Committee be revised to adopt the procedures as set out in the protocol for remote meetings.  The key revisions were:

·         Registration for speaking deadline changed from 12 noon on the day before the day of the meeting to 12 noon 2 clear working days before the day of the meeting.

·         Speaking time for all categories, with the exception of Ward Member, to be limited to 3 minutes, currently 5 minutes was allowed.

·         Ward Member speaking time to be limited to 5 minutes, currently unlimited time was allowed.

·         Only one person to speak in each category of objector, supporter, applicant/agent. Should more than one person wish to speak in any of those categories it would be for those persons to agree between themselves who would speak.  If this was not possible, the first registered speaker would be allocated the speaking time. The current protocol allowed speaking time to be shared up to the time limit.

·         Committee Members would be given the opportunity to ask questions of speakers for a maximum of 10 minutes.  Direct questioning of speakers was not currently permitted.

Should unforeseen issues arise or further best practice be identified it was important that public speaking rules were able to be amended in a timely fashion to facilitate the effective operation of the Committee. In those circumstances it was considered appropriate and was recommended that the Council delegated to the Assistant Director of Planning, in consultation with the Chairman of the Planning Committee and Portfolio Holder for Planning, the power to amend public speaking rules for remote and physical Planning Committee meetings.

It was moved by Councillor Tom Ashton and seconded by Councillor Alison Austin

1.         That Council approves the introduction of public speaking at remote meetings of Planning Committee from 9 March 2021 and that the Council’s Remote Meetings Protocol and Procedure Rules be amended as set out in this report.

2.         That the Public Speaking Protocol for physical meetings of the Planning Committee be revised to reflect the registration deadlines, number of speakers and time limit on speaking within the protocol for remote meetings, for purposes of consistency.

3.         That any further amendments to the Public Speaking Protocol for both remote and physical meetings of the Planning Committee, be delegated to the Assistant Director of Planning, in consultation with the Chairman of the Planning Committee and the Portfolio Holder for Planning.

Members welcomed the proposal to introduce public speaking for remote meetings of the Planning Committee, but were concerned that reducing the speaking time to three minutes would create difficulties for members of the public who may not be used to speaking in public.

An amendment was moved by Councillor Anne Dorrian that the allowance of three minutes speaking time, as set out in 1.3 of the protocol, be increased to five minutes.

The proposer and seconder of the substantive motion agreed to accept the amendment.

The substantive motion was put to the vote and it was