Agenda and minutes

At the start of the meeting, the Executive Director (Place) gave a presentation on the introduction and purpose of Cabinet Planning and Parking Panel (CPPP). Cabinet panels were set up to deal with policy and development in individual and specialised areas; they had cross-party representation, operated in line with the Constitution, considered reports; and made recommendations to Cabinet. CPPP worked on strategies, policies and plans in relation to planning and transportation matters and made recommendations to Cabinet in relation to the adoption of such strategies. It considered the results of any sustainability appraisal reports and the results of public consultations, and evaluated and submitted representations to planning documents where appropriate. It considered the annual monitoring report as well as key milestones for the local development scheme on the Local Plan. The previous committee had recently considered recommendations to and the adoption of the Local Plan, updates to conservation areas and had agreed the parking programme and traffic regulation orders. Meetings were held throughout the year; there were some regular planning policy items and some items would be considered when they reached a key milestone.

To note any substitution of Panel Members in accordance with Council Procedure Rules.

An apology for absence was received from Cllr Pankit Shah.

The following substation of committee members was made in accordance with Council Procedure Rules:

Councillor Jill Weston for Councillor Pankit Shah.

The Chair welcomed Councillors Gilbert and Hobbs as new members of the committee and thanked Councillor Thorpe for having chaired CPPP last year.  

To confirm as a correct record the Minutes of the meeting held on 14 March 2024 (previously circulated).

The minutes of the meeting held on 14 March 2024 were approved as a correct record.

There were no items of urgent business.

To note declarations of Members’ disclosable pecuniary interests, non-disclosable pecuniary interests and non-pecuniary interests in respect of items on this Agenda.

Councillors T Kingsbury and S Thusu declared they were members of Hertfordshire County Council.

Up to thirty minutes will be made available for questions from members of the public on issues relating to the work of the Committee and to receive any petitions.

There were no public questions or petitions.

The Planning and Policy Implementation Manager introduced the report which provided an update on the introduction of mandatory Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) and the status of the Welwyn Hatfield Biodiversity Net Gain Guidance Note 2023. BNG was a way of creating and improving biodiversity by requiring developments to have a positive impact net gain on biodiversity. A BNG guidance note had been reported to CPPP previously and was endorsed by Cabinet in September 2023. At that time, the Local Plan had not yet been adopted and secondary legislation and government guidance was awaited to clarify how the requirement for BNG would be applied in practice. BNG is now a mandatory requirement for qualifying development in England and there is now an extensive collection of national guidance and tools on its implementation. Mandatory BNG now takes precedence over local policy and therefore part of the local plan policy had been superseded by the statutory framework. National guidance stated that plan makers did not need to duplicate the detailed provisions of the statutory framework and it would be inappropriate for plans and supplementary planning documents to include policies or guidance that were incompatible with the framework. Consequently, the Welwyn Hatfield BNG was not now considered necessary in decision making for planning applications. As part of the Local Plan review, consideration would be given as to how the statutory framework could be complemented. Any percentage higher than 10% must be evidenced, justified and capable of being implemented and this could be explored as part of the Local Plan review.    

A member asked why the timetable for mandatory BNG had been delayed as referenced in paragraph 3.7 of the report. Officers noted this had been a significant change for the development industry and were unsure about the reasons for the national delay.

A member referenced paragraph 3.11 of the report and asked what developments would be exempt. Officers advised examples would be householder planning applications, ie smaller scale developments where this would be an unreasonable burden to add.

A member noted the report said a 10% gain per large development was needed and asked how that would be achieved. Officers explained that before a site was to be redeveloped, developers would need to establish that the baseline biodiversity situation at the start was over 10%; this was calculated through a government-designed metric with different levels of gain being related to different types of habitats. The member asked if that meant in another ten years there would be more biodiversity than now, and officers confirmed that was the objective.

A member commented on the fact that the report said there were no direct financial implications. Officers confirmed the burden of this was on the developer.

A member commented that this seemed like a subject the Climate Biodiversity Cabinet Panel (CBCP) would be interested in. Officers agreed that there would potentially be an opportunity for involving CBCP via the review of the Local Plan; the report was under consideration at this meeting because the Council’s interim  ...  view the full minutes text for item 111.

The Planning and Policy Implementation Manager introduced the report. The Housing Delivery Test was an annual measure of the delivery of housing in a local authority area and it compared the total net homes delivered against the number of homes required over a rolling 3 year period. The government had published the 2022 Housing Delivery Test result in December 2023; Welwyn Hatfield had delivered 65% of homes against its target for the 3 year period, which equated to 1,283 homes delivered against 1,971 required. This result meant the Council was again required to produce an action plan looking at causes of under-delivery and actions to improve it; the last action plan was published by Welwyn Hatfield in October 2022. In addition to producing the action plan, as delivery was still below 75% the Council was required to continue to apply the presumption in favour of sustainable development when determining planning applications.

The action plan looked at factors that might impact housing delivery such as local plans, planning performance in terms of determining speed of applications, and the Council’s efforts to increase housing supply through its housing schemes. Some key actions were: to determine applications for Local Plan housing sites as quickly as reasonably possible; contacting landowners/ developers to invite initial discussions when planning applications for Local Plan site allocations had not been received and/ or to understand delays in sites coming forward; progressing implementation of the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL); and amending the structure of the Development Management service to be more responsive to the progression of the most significant planning applications. It might take some time for any improvement in the housing delivery test to be recorded as it was a retrospective rolling 3-year calculation. Additionally, the lead-in time between planning permission being granted and site completion was usually 2 – 3 years.  

A member asked how the presumption in favour of sustainable development was applied. Officers responded that they needed to consider the delivery of houses; all planning decisions were a balancing exercise and staff needed to factor in the Council not having achieved the number of homes delivered against its target. This was not about sustainable scheme specifics (such as solar panels) but about factoring in the undersupply within the Council’s decision making.

A member observed that a high proportion of delivery that had been missed had been during 2021 – 2022 when the impacts of the pandemic were being felt and asked if that had been a contributory factor and whether other local authorities had been similarly impacted. Officers said the principal reason was because the Local Plan had only recently been adopted meaning there had not been housing sites available; however other factors had impacted delivery including the pandemic and the timing of when developers wanted to bring forward sites. The action plan looked ahead in terms of putting in place measures to improve delivery and now the Local Plan was in place it was anticipated that sites would come forward, contributing to delivering against  ...  view the full minutes text for item 112.