PLANNING COMMITTEE GOES VIRTUAL

Lockdown has prompted variations in the speed and responsiveness from NI’s eleven Councils in how they manage to maintain level of service delivery and decision making on planning applications.

One aspect of that has been how to maintain the planning committee’s function where attendance in person is not appropriate or possible due to the ongoing Covid 19 impact.

To address this problem Councils have embraced the virtual world, inroducing the communication platform Zoom to allow participants in the planning committee to dial in to an audio visual meeting via wifi and the internet. This new approach has however taken time and there is a Covid 19 generated backlog that is slowing down decision making across the province.

The virtual committee often involves some elected members attending in the Council chamber with Council officials and other elected members and case planning officers connecting remotely from home together with representatives of the planning applicant and third parties.

Broadly the process has remained unchanged, the applicant’s agents and third parties having to formally secure speaking rights in advance of the committee and submit a written summary of the issues they wish to present. Each Council takes a slightly different approach to how it runs its planning committee meetings by having slight variations in their protocols with the time allocated to the member of the public or the applicant’s agents ranging from two minutes (Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council) to five minutes (Belfast City Council). That does not sound like a great deal of time to try and articulate the merits that weigh in favour of a proposal being approved.

Mercifully, the minutes that are allowed offer an initial opportunity to distil the key points you wish the committee to be alive to but the time that follows in questions and answers is where skilled planning professionals come in to their own and bring substantial value to their clients.

Whilst you can prepare your representation in advance what you are not privy to is the issues that may arise from third parties and comments made by Council planning officers prior to your opportunity to speak. That demands being focused and alert during the proceedings and to have the ability to think very quickly on your feet to respond to and rebut earlier comments whilst delivering your own advocacy in favour or against a development. A disadvantage of the virtual committee is the inability to read the room and see the body language of respective members – that is lost and much trickier in the world of disconnected microphones and trying to read faces on a screen.

The skill is to be well prepared, be across all of the detail and be ready to respond robustly and persuasively to the questions you will face. To remember that you are there to confidently reassure Members why they can confidently vote to approve or refuse developments where they have properly weighed the development plan and all other material considerations before them and have come to a reasonable and appropriately balanced judgement. That ultimately is what they have a statutory obligation to do. You are there to help them get there and of course to hope that they have listened to what you have said!