The deadline for questions to be submitted to the Monitoring Officer is 31 December 2021
Minutes:
Question from Councillor Mark Howell
How much has the Council contributed in funding to Christmas activities, decorations and events in 2021 whether directly or via funding to other organisations and whether one off contributions or part of longer-term contracts? Please supply total figures for each of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, and please further break down this information between each town centre and local centre.
Reply from Councillor Beverley Dunlop, Cabinet Member for Culture and Vibrant Places
A legacy budget of £44K for Bournemouth for the installation, removal, repair and replacement of Christmas decorations is not broken down by neighbourhood centres but is used where necessary to maintain or replace Xmas decorations and lights as and when needed.
There are two other legacy Christmas budget items, £110k for Xmas Tree Wonderland, in Bournemouth, a contract, which has now completed and £20k from Christchurch for lighting and Christmas trees.
These are the Christmas budgets that Cllr Howell inherited from the legacy councils when he became portfolio holder in May 2019 and the Conservative administration subsequently inherited from him completely unchanged 18 months later in October 2020, i.e. nothing for Poole Town or any of the district centres.
Incidentally, the entire Poole events budget that Cllr Howell handed to Cllr Iyengar was less than the Christchurch Christmas budget, the princely sum of £17,200.
In 2021 we were determined to correct this imbalance and boost events across the conurbation by putting extra funding into the cultural budget.
And we did with a massive programme of 700 performances right across the three towns in summer 2021. Mr Chairman you may recall that Cllr Howell and other councillors from Poole and Christchurch, in Council, spoke and voted against this proposed increase in cultural spending.
As part of Festival Coast Live we also obtained CIL approval for £50k infrastructure improvements to decorative lighting and electrical power infrastructure for Poole High Street and Poole Quay, an essential component in developing a Christmas experience for Poole.
And that is precisely what we’re working on now. As part of our programme for 2022, to deliver on our Big Plan supporting the regeneration of Poole, we are intending to invest further in Christmas activities, working with partners so that Poole residents can enjoy a spectacular Christmas festival!
And I say the same to Christchurch residents; we will be working with local partners to develop your events programme even further.
This Conservative administration will continue to be proactive in supporting business and delighting our residents with high quality festivals and events, and Christmas 2022 will see amongst other things the launch of the Christmas Maritime Festival in Poole.
Councillor Howell, as a supplementary question asked that resources were spent equitably across the conurbation. Councillor Dunlop in response emphasised the approach in ensuring that all residents had the opportunity to enjoy the events and festivals that were held.
Note – the meeting was adjourned from 19.32 – 19.37
Question from Councillor Margaret Phipps
My question relates to the Planning Committee carrying out its duties and responsibilities. Part 2 of the Constitution, Article 12, Principles of Decision Making, states - When the Council takes a decision it will do so in accordance with the following principles - Item e) - Have due regard to appropriate national, strategic, local policy and guidance.
I specifically refer to the Planning Committee meeting on 16th December 2021, a recording of which is in the public domain. There was an application in my Ward on the agenda at 6e) where a 4-storey block of flats and 4 houses were recommended by officers for refusal. There were 275 objections one of which was Natural England regarding habitats, and the application failed the sequential test for flood risk.
The officer’s report listed many Christchurch Core Strategy and Local Plan policies on which the application failed, I counted at least eight. Also, it was non-compliant with some paragraphs in the NPPF. In addition, the Legal Officer explained some of the policy failures to members.
After around an hour of debate, during which you as Chair of the meeting intervened several times to question some of the reasons for refusal, the application was finally, as per the officer recommendation and legal advice, refused - but only just - by 8 votes to 6. I heard said many times in the debate, that many of the members who voted for grant “liked” the look of the building.
Whether some members like the look of an application is a personal opinion, and that is not a reason to ignore clear policy reasons for refusal. I believe residents should be able to rely on a fair assessment of applications according to planning policy. In my opinion this did not happen with this application, where some members considered that liking the building overrode policy.
My question is – what has gone wrong within the Planning Committee, that 6 members, including yourself, disregarded “appropriate national, strategic, local policy and guidance”, contrary to our constitution, to vote for grant of an application which clearly failed so many local and national policies, and was recommended by officers for refusal?
Reply from Councillor David Kelsey, Chairman of the Planning Committee
Thank you for the question. In response, in my opinion nothing has gone wrong with Planning Committee. With regard to the case you refer, Planning Committee upheld the officer’s recommendation to refuse following a robust and probing debate of the key issues, so I am not entirely clear why anyone would find fault in that outcome.
I acknowledge that there were dissenting views from some of the planning committee members during the debate, including from myself. However, members having different views and being allowed and encouraged to express them is part of normal process that happens in all planning committees across the country. The policy and guidance discussed during the debate are often matters of planning judgment, and just because a planning committee member reaches a different view on how that judgment is applied, it cannot mean they should not express it nor vote accordingly.
This is ultimately the purpose of the planning committee – to apply planning judgments based on the information before them impartially, fearlessly and openly. Without such an approach we may as well do away with the planning committee and solely rely on the officers’ recommendations not an approach I or our residents would be happy with, I am sure everyone would agree there is considerable merit in having the planning committee so the difficult planning issues can be discussed in public without political affiliation or local bias to ultimately reach a consensus decision on the planning merits of a proposal.
I respectfully disagree that appropriate national, strategic, local policy and guidance were disregarded in this case – it was a matter of planning judgment ultimately and I am satisfied that the decision to refuse the application was reached entirely within the Council’s due process and the Committee’s discharge of its planning functions.
Councillor Phipps indicated that she had no problem with debate and appreciated that the refusal was upheld but it was so close it could have very easily gone the other way. Councillor Phipps indicated that this was about public confidence and asked do you think that those who voted as they did to effectively grant this application gave the public confidence in our planning system. Councillor Kelsey in response indicated that halfway through the debate on the application a deferral was mentioned to obtain further information. Councillor Kelsey explained that he had voted against the move to grant because he preferred to have a deferral and he was sure that there were more than just himself in the room who voted that way. He questioned the view that it was only beaten 8 to 6 votes which was wrong as having not been in the room Councillor Phipps could not understand why Members voted the way they did.
Councillor Brooke reported that having received a partial answer to his question after 4 months he decided that at this point in time to withdraw his question, but it would not be the end to the matter.