Icklesham Parish Council planning committee

Many residents assume that parish council planning committees are empowered to take decisions on planning applications and many parish councillors (if not most) share this belief. However, parish councils have absolutely no planning powers. All planning decisions (apart from those on strategic infrastructure projects) are taken by the planning committees at District Councils, which are the Local Planning Authorities (LPA). Parish councils are not even “statutory consultees” on planning issues, in other words, the LPA is not obliged to seek their views. The sole planning privilege granted to parish councils is that they have the right to be notified of local applications. Beyond this, parish councils are in the same position as individual residents. To influence a planning decision being made by the LPA, both parish councils and individual residents have to make comments based on material planning considerations, ie points of planning law and policy. Simply supporting or objecting to a particular application is just a waste of everybody’s time.

Icklesham Parish Council’s planning committee has only just been persuaded to stop saying that it “approves” or “rejects” applications, which gave the false impression it was a decision-making body. But it has not been possible to persuade it to offer substantive reasons. However, the most serious failure of Icklesham’s planning committee has been its disinclination to contribute to the formulation of planning policy. This is where parish councils, at least collectively, could make a real difference to planning. Ample opportunities have arisen recently, with the consultations on the Local Development Framework, Conservation Areas and the AONB Management Plan review, and at workshops organised at the last Rother planning seminar. Unfortunately, Icklesham has ignored such opportunities: only Winchelsea ward councillors took part.

Of course, Winchelsea may be more sensitive to planning issues than the other three wards of Icklesham Parish. It is the only Conservation Area in the parish, includes the only Scheduled Ancient Monuments (three of them in fact) and has a unique heritage as a medieval planned town that retains its original layout and landscape setting. It also includes some 120 listed buildings (Rye has about 300).

Given that Winchelsea is a site of such special historical and archaeological interest, a central objective of the parish council planning committee should be conservation in Winchelsea. However, in Icklesham Paish Council, on the matter of planning --- as in many other areas --- there is a kick against Winchelsea. For example, when comments about any planning application in Winchelsea have referred to the Conservation Area, Cllr Bronsdon of Rye Harbour (now the Chairman of the planning committee) has summarily dismissed the Conservation Area as merely a matter of “aesthetics”. That of course is the whole point of Conservation Areas! They are intended to maintain and enhance the special character and appearance of places! And this aim is a material planning consideration and imposes an obligation on all public authorities.

Another ongoing cause for concern has been the policy of ignoring letters objecting to planning applications in Winchelsea if they have not been copied to the parish council, even if they on the Rother website, or have been copied to the ward councillors. Refusing to accept that Winchelsea ward councillors are elected representatives of Winchelsea residents is a tenet of faith among most councillors from other wards and can be dismissed as petty politics, but refusing to acknowledge the existence of letters on planning applications seeks to disenfranchise the whole of Winchelsea.

New depths were plumbed at the planning committee in January. The subject was an application for the conversion of the former gasometer at the end of Hogtrough Lane into holiday accommodation. This site is outside the development boundary but within the Conservation Area, so the proposal raises exceptional issues. The parish council had before them an 11-page letter of objection from a conservation group in Winchelsea. It was a very detailed text, extensively referenced to planning law and obviously the product of much research. But Cllr Bronsdon dismissed the entire letter as being “only” about “heritage” and “planning law”, as though these were irrelevant to planning rather than central to the whole issue! No further reference was made to the letter and none of its arguments were considered.

In addition, the letters of objection on the Rother website were dismissed as being too few to matter, and additional letters, which were waiting to be posted on the Rother website, were brushed aside, even though they had been copied to a Winchelsea councillor. To date, letters have been written by 17 individual residents and three community groups, far more than is usual and a clear indication of local concern. This is in addition to letters from the County Archaeologist, the Environmental Health Officer and the National Trust. None of these letters were brought to the attention of the planning committee or discussed.

On the other hand, the planning committee, most of whose members had to declare a personal interest because they knew the applicant and one had done business with him, accepted without question the applicant’s argument that the proposal would improve the gasometer, which has been allowed to deteriorate into a very poor state. They were presumably unaware or unconcerned that national planning policy disallows such an argument and in fact views the deterioration of historic buildings as undermining the viability of proposals for conversion.

Things got even worse. The planning committee had been asked by a Winchelsea councillor to write to Rother to support a request for a Section 215 notice to be served on the owner of the gasometer to enforce his Conservation Area obligations to maintain the structure. However, the request contained a typo and said “125” rather than “215”, although it was quite clear from the text what a S215 notice was and the planning committee has come across them before. But the Chairman refused to allow the request to be considered or for a correction to be made by amendment.

By the end of the meeting, one could only be thankful that parish councils have no planning powers.