Concerns raised about ‘lack of planning applications’ decided by councillors since creation of new North Yorkshire Council in April

Since borough and district councils were replaced by North Yorkshire Council in April, there has been a decrease in the number of planning applications decided by councillors, with more decisions being made by council officers.

Between April and August 2022, the now-defunct Scarborough Council’s planning committee dealt with a total of 30 planning applications.

But since it was replaced in April with North Yorkshire Council’s Scarborough and Whitby area planning committee, only 10 planning decisions have been made by councillors over the same period, a decrease of more than 60 per cent.

Coun Subash Sharma, vice-chair of the Scarborough and Whitby area planning committee, said: “We had a chairs’ and vice-chairs’ meeting in Northallerton of all the constituency committees, and one of the things that everyone was commenting on was the lack of applications coming through to them.

“They were concerned that they were just not getting enough of them, with just the odd one or two, so I think it’s the scheme of delegation that has been made so tight that nothing’s really coming through.

“In Scarborough, what we’re getting is stuff to do on the council which has to by law come through to be decided, such as the Whitby Old Town Hall and the Scarborough South Cliff chalets, because the council owns the properties.”

North Yorkshire Council’s corporate director of community development, Nic Harne, said: “Under the council’s constitution, there are a range of specified types of applications that need to be considered by a planning committee.

“In addition, if any member believes that an application raises significant material planning issues, they can request such an application be considered by committee.

“Furthermore, senior officers can also refer applications to councillors.”

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, he added: “It is our aim to ensure that all items that should be considered by members are put in front of committees.

“Since April, all the area planning committees and the strategic committee have met and have considered more than 40 applications.

“We are committed to keeping the scheme of delegation under review and we are carefully monitoring the number of items going to committee and requests for call-in by councillors.”

Coun Sharma said he believed that “there may have been a thought process somewhere along the system that councillors may not be willing to take the right decisions” and added that it could pose issues for accountability in local government.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the vice-chair of the committee said that planning committees deciding on local issues “gives reassurance to individuals who are concerned with applications that their thoughts have at least been listened to by someone” and said that it gave the planning process “acceptability and credibility among the local population”.

He added that it “seems disproportionate” for councillors to take a day off work to attend planning committee meetings that only have a few applications and it had left him feeling “detached from the planning process completely”.

Mr Harne said that the authority was aiming to ensure that decisions are “made in the right way” and would be making recommendations to councillors “based on evidence from the first 12 months of the new council”.