Agenda item

Report attached.

It was good practice to review the scheme of delegation regularly to keep it up to date.  This helped to ensure that the Council’s decision-making processes operated as effectively as possible and in accordance with legal requirements.  The scheme was, therefore, updated each year at the Council’s Annual Meeting.

The proposed scheme of delegation for 2025/26 was set out in Schedule 1 to the report.  The changes this year were minor and comprised the following:

• Giving the Executive Director (Resources) delegated powers in respect of council tax recovery, to reflect that most recovery was now undertaken with Finance, rather than by Legal Services.  The delegation to the Executive Director (Legal & Democratic Services) would remain to cover situations where Legal Services needed to become involved in recovery activity;

• At present councillors were able to “call-in” planning applications which were purely factual or technical in nature.  This included:

o    Certificates of Lawfulness, which were determined based on the facts of the case (they were used to establish whether existing or proposed development needed planning permission and planning merits were not relevant).

o    Discharge of Conditions applications, which were technical in nature and related to details of already approved development.

o    Prior Notifications and Prior Approvals, where the Local Planning Authority had a limited time to determine these applications and failure to issue a timely decision resulted in an automatic approval.

Such application types were very rarely called-in as they were generally of a minor nature.  An amendment was proposed that would delegate approval of all of these application types to the Chief Planning Officer.

• Currently all planning applications which were subject to a section 106 agreement had to be reported to Planning Committee. However, in some circumstances this could be onerous.  For example, if an applicant wanted to make minor amendments to an already approved planning application, there often needed to be a ‘linking agreement’ which tied the new permission back to the original s106 agreement.  In such circumstances, the current scheme of delegation required the matter to be referred back to Committee on what was essentially a technicality, even though members would have already agreed the principle of development.  It was therefore proposed to remove the automatic requirement to refer applications to Planning Committee where a s106 agreement was needed.  However, the Chair, Vice-Chair and local councillors would still be able to call-in such applications if they deemed fit.  In addition, most applications requiring a section 106 agreement were major applications that would be taken to Planning Committee for determination in any case.

Councillor Addison spoke against the automatic delegation of prior notification and prior approval.  In particular, she was concerned that members of the Planning Committee should have the ability to have their say on issues such as 5G masts, even though the Government had provided greater powers to telecommunications companies.  By way of example, the 5G mast proposals on Harvey Street, Oswaldtwistle, had given rise to a number of concerns from residents. Councillor Dad was sympathetic to the points raised, but indicated that discussions were on-going about Harvey Street.

Resolved                                   -    That the Council agrees the scheme of delegation to officers, as set out in Schedule 1 to the report.