Agenda item

            The Committee was advised that, during July, the Department of the Environment had published a consultation document entitled “Reform of the Planning System in Northern Ireland”, which set out the measures which the Department proposed to take in order to reform the planning system in Northern Ireland in the medium to longer term.  The consultation set out also the proposals to make the changes required in order to implement the decisions taken under the Review of Public Administration which would result in the majority of planning functions returning to Local Government.  To assist Councils in responding to the consultation document, the Department was holding a series of stakeholder events across Northern Ireland, with the Belfast event taking place on Friday, 11th September at 10.30 a.m. in Grosvenor House, Glengall Street.

            The Director of Improvement reported that, following an initial review of the consultation document, the main strategic issues for the Committee to consider at this stage were as follows:

·         there was the potential for the Northern Ireland Planning System to become more fragmented with the regional planning function remaining with two central departments, that is, the Department for Regional Development and the Department of the Environment, while local planning would be transferred to the new Councils;

·         the Department was proposing a new local development plan system, together with a number of other reforms which would be determined by the new Councils.  This would have significant resource and capacity implications for the new Councils which had not been addressed in the document;

·         the Department proposed a high level scrutiny of local Council planning functions through a number of measures including:

- the statement of community involvement must be agreed by central government;

-  local Councils’ programme for the review of the local development plan must be agreed through a Programme Management Scheme by central government;

-  regionally significant developments would be determined by the Department and the Minister; and

-  the proposed thresholds set for regionally significant applications indicated a high level of call-in by the Department;

·         the proposal for a tiered system to determine planning applications meant that they would be determined by either central government or local Councils, which could potentially cause confusion.

            The reforms proposed in the consultation paper were intended to underpin the transfer of planning functions to Local Authorities and to set the framework under which the planning role would be undertaken by the eleven new Councils.  The role of the Transition Committees was to ensure continuity of service delivery across the new Council areas from 2011 and to integrate transferred services and new functions into the new Councils’ operations.  Accordingly, it had been determined that the Council’s Transition Committee would be the most appropriate vehicle to determine the Council’s response to the consultation exercise.

            Since the “Reform of the Planning System in Northern Ireland” consultation covered a wide range of areas, comments were being sought currently from all Council Departments in order to inform the response.  In addition, any comments which the Party Groups or individual Members might wish to make would be welcomed and would inform the preparation of the draft response which would be submitted to the meeting of the Transition Committee scheduled to be held on 4th September.

            In addition, since the responsibility for the areas which had been addressed in the consultation paper fell principally within the remits of the Development and Town Planning Committees, it was intended that both of those Committees would be informed of the aforementioned proposals and invited to attend the meeting of the Transition Committee in September at which the response was to be considered.

            Accordingly, it was recommended that the Committee agree to:

(i)      to approve the arrangements outlined for the formulation of a corporate response to the consultation document;

(ii)     any Party Group or Member being authorised to provide initial input to the formulation of the draft response by contacting the Review of Public Administration Co-ordinator prior to 21st August;

(iii)    authorise the attendance of the Members of the Town Planning and Development Committees at the September meeting of the Transition Committee at which the draft response to the consultation would be considered; and

(iv)    approve the attendance of the Chairmen and the Deputy Chairmen of the Transition, Development and Town Planning Committees (or their nominees) and a representative from each of the Party Groupings not represented by the aforementioned Members, together with appropriate officers, at the Belfast consultation event scheduled to be held on 11th September.

            The Committee adopted the recommendations.