Agenda item

To consider a presentation and report on the outcomes of the Borough Local Plan Issues and Options consultation.

The Portfolio Holder for Planning and Growth, Councillor Fear introduced the item, drawing Members’ attention to paragraphs 1.6, 1.9 and section 2 of the report.

In January, 2021 the Council set out to do a plan for the Borough and this was the first consultation for the plan, running for 14 weeks between November, 2021 and January, 2022. Two more consultations would follow in due course.

Consultations took place both face to face and virtually with 3,649 comments being received, two petitions and 757 ‘template’ letters.

A key theme coming out of the consultation was a demand to use brownfield sites, wherever possible, to protect Green Belt land.  There was a lot of discussion on infrastructure and how it would impact on communities.  Climate change, Brexit and Covid were also touched upon.

All comments were published and made publically available on the consultation portal.

It was stated that lots of people had difficulty looking at the consultation online and this needed to be acknowledged.  People had also been expecting comments made at face to face meetings to be gathered.

There had been some issues online because a new software provider had been brought in to do a consultation portal.  It was also found that people had made technical errors on their side.  However, when anyone had a problem they were instantly responded to.

It was asked whether the Council was complying with its Statement of Community Involvement.

The only anomaly had been that the Statement of Community Involvement stated that venues would have notepaper for people to make comments on.  This was made difficult by covid but also with 37 questions in the document it may have been better to have produced a leaflet with the questions written down but this could have put people off.  Therefore anything that was brought into the venue was taken away as a representation, it was logged and the persons details were taken.

The legality of treating the 757 individual template letters as a petition was questioned.

The letters were summarised for the presentation and the strength of feeling from those letters came across very clearly and all of the comments would be taken into account.

From a legal point of view, there was nothing to say in which way such responses should be treated in a local plan consultation process.  It was all in terms of reasonableness and fairness of the process and principles of natural justice.  The opportunity to make comments and have those properly considered and taken into account.

The budget was also questioned, as to whether the consultation process had been within budget as it had gone on longer than planned.

In terms of extending the consultation, two further physical (in Keele and Audley), and one further virtual event were held – it was more of a time delay and therefore would have remained within the consultation budget.

It was queried whether the Scrutiny Committee would have the opportunity to get more involved with some of the suggestions that had come forward from residents.

The document looked at the process of consultation and in that respect it was hoped that some of the worries had been dealt with.  Further consultation documents would be brought back to this committee.  If Members wanted to underline things at this time before it went before Cabinet, that would be fine.

Resolved:     That the feedback on the Newcastle under Lyme Local Plan Issues & Strategic Options consultation be noted, and following review, provide comments for further consideration at Cabinet.

Watch the debate here