Agenda item

Questions

Minutes:

Councillor Josh Williams asked the Chair of the Planning Applications Committee:

 

Locally Listed Buildings

 

One year ago I asked about the process for Local Listing of Reading’s important buildings, which at the moment is conducted by officers and decided by the Lead Councillor for Planning.  The answer from the Chair was that following a discussion with the Lead Member for Strategic Environment, Planning and Transport a review would be undertaken of the whole local listing process and a report brought back for discussion at Planning Applications Committee. Could the Chair update us on what progress has been made over the last 12 months on making the Local Listing process more proactive, more public facing and part of the democratic work of the Planning Committee?

 

REPLY by the Chair of the Planning Applications Committee (Councillor McKenna):

 

‘I have provided the answers to the questions you had asked on the 9th October 2019 as an appendix to this answer for the written record. While I will not read those previous responses into the spoken record, I believe they may serve as a helpful reminder to members of the committee and may be of value to members of the public who may view this meeting in the future.

 

Turning to your direct question, initial conversations and scoping was begun and a named officer assigned who began the main body of work in the review in late February this year.  This was to involve liaising with Historic England, the Planning Advisory Service (PAS), interested bodies within Reading, elected members and with a number of other local planning authorities to identify best practice and develop a model for Reading Borough Council that would be fit for the next decade.

 

This was to have resulted in a report to this committee which provided options and asked for our views on any proposed changes to the current process.  A recommendation would then have been made to a constitutionally appropriate committee to formally endorse and enact any required alterations to enshrine a formal role for this committee.

 

Then our world changed.  This is readily evidenced by our virtual meeting this evening.  Understandably it became impossible to make good progress.

 

As you are unfortunately well aware as another serving councillor, councils have seen a decade long squeeze on available budgets.  It should therefore be recognised that the staff of the planning service at Reading Borough Council, akin to all other Local planning authorities are often stretched. 

 

This led to a necessary refocus on the ‘core business’ of determining applications, while at the same time having to develop entirely new ways of processing applications when remote working.  This has been achieved at a time of considerable disruption and uncertainty while already in the middle of a long overdue upgrade of our IT infrastructure which was underway in the first few months of 2020. 

 

We can all appreciate the scale of the challenges our new world has laid before us. However, I can easily commend our officers who have been able to adapt to this new and changing world without losing focus on the core function of the planning service.  They have, despite the numerous challenges, continued the processing of planning applications within the statutory timeframes.  This is evidenced clearly within the performance monitoring report we will come to discuss as Agenda item 6 of tonight’s meeting and so I will not speak to it here.

 

That said, I would like to reassure you that neither I, the Lead Member for Strategic Environment, Planning and Transport, who is a member of this committee, nor officers, have forgotten the commitment to bring a report to this committee.

 

Indeed, I can report a positive outcome of the initial scoping exercise, which along with the visit of the historic places panel of historic England, identified both the need and opportunity for creation of a new specialist post within the planning directorate. Our first Conservation and Urban Design Officer has joined the authority in mid-September and a refresh of the local listing process is already underway as one of their assigned duties.

 

As they are still in their onboarding process, I’m afraid I can’t provide a definitive timeline at this point and will instead ask your indulgence to return to this discussion in our next meeting on the 4th of November.’

 

It was agreed at the meeting that Councillor Williams would submit a follow-up question to the next meeting.

 

(The full text of the question, answer and appendix was made available on the Reading Borough Council website.)

Supporting documents: