Council meetings – a statement

Released on July 13, 2020

A statement from Cllr Anne-Marie Simpson, Cabinet Member for Planning at South Oxfordshire District Council 

Earlier this year, our council had to revert to working from home with no notice and put significant resources into the vital community support work to protect our most vulnerable residents when they were most at need.

As soon as we were able, we set up our online remote meeting processes to allow our decision-making process to begin.  For a short period of time, it has meant external contributions to meetings have had to be made in writing rather than in person because we needed to find ways to adapt our software and procedures to securely bring external representatives into the meeting – a problem faced by many similar organisations.

Of course, we would rather contributions were made in person, but the request from government was to keep the planning process running by making whatever adjustments were necessary to do this and avoid a build-up of outstanding applications. We therefore had to move forward on that basis, rather than being able to pause for a short period of time to develop a secure technical solution and procedures to allow external contributions made in person. 

Regrettably, when the previous administration outsourced the council’s IT service to Capita, they did not include provision for technology that would enable us to broadcast meetings – a rather curious omission given their recent protestations of a desire for greater transparency. Like so many other areas across the Council, this lack of foresight now has to be addressed by the new Liberal Democrat and Green partnership.

I comprehensively reject the notion that the changes made to our online meetings were in any way an attempt to restrict or silence contributions, and I find it wholly disingenuous of those quoted in a recent newspaper article to imply this knowing full well the challenges we faced, and knowing full well that we are less than a week away from testing a solution that will allow external representatives like parish councils to again speak at our meetings. If things go well, we will be rolling this out before the end of this month as it will be considered by full council when it meets on 16 July.

I am also disappointed that the councillors quoted in the article have failed to mention the joint letter, from myself and all political group leaders, to the secretary of state requesting that he temporarily remove the need for us to meet statutory planning targets and adjust the 5 year housing land supply requirements during the period of the Covid-19 crisis. This request was made specifically so that we could ensure that we are able to pause planning applications for a very short period of time whilst we transitioned to virtual meetings without the risk of speculative development, but regrettably, despite it being supported by many town and parish councils, the Secretary of State did not agree to it. 

In fact, the Secretary of State did not even respond, and instead continued to insist that the continued determination of planning applications and the building of homes across so much of our country was prioritised even during lockdown.  This required some local authorities to delegate all of their planning decisions to officers – something we’ve been able to avoid thanks to the quick way in which our administration led the set up of our online meeting process.

Doing so has meant we have been able to maintain democratic accountability within our planning process – and we believe asking parish councils and others to contribute in writing rather than in person for a very short period of time, while not ideal, was a reasonable request to help us avoid a return to wide spread speculative development that blighted our district only a few years ago.  All of the changes that have been made to facilitate on line meetings and procedures were introduced with a commitment to review them within six months – it is a great regret to me that the changes to the planning process that the Secretary of State intends to introduce, which will increase permitted development and further reduce democratic decision making, will be subject to no such review.

The voice of our Towns and Parishes matters and this administration listens.  We listened when residents, Towns and Parishes asked us to reconsider the emerging Local Plan, yet at the stroke of a pen the Secretary of State removed from councillors and residents the ability to do this – where, I ask myself, were the voices of Councillors Snowden and Newton when the administration reached out to all parties on the Council seeking their support for a cross-party approach to the Secretary of State that he reconsider his position and allow local residents and local councillors to express their views?  Though perhaps the answer to that question is no surprise, they are of course members of the party that believes the answer to a worldwide pandemic is to ‘build, build, build’.

A ‘power grab’ has indeed been made on the planning powers that I believe should be vested in locally elected South Oxfordshire District Councillors – although it was not made by this Council or by this administration, but by the Conservative Secretary of State when he issued his Direction on 3 March regarding our local plan.