Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Councillors Gordon Blair, Rory Colville, Audrey Forrest, Graham Archibald Hardie and Roderick McCuish.

There were no declarations of interest.

Report by Head of Development and Economic Growth

The Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting and introductions were made.  He then outlined the procedure that would be followed and invited the Governance, Risk and Safety Manager to identify all those present who wished to speak.

 

PLANNING

 

Howard Young gave the following presentation on behalf of the Head of Development and Economic Growth.  

 

As indicated this is an application by Simply UK for a 64 bedroom care home on the old depot site near Hermitage Park.   It was continued from the July meeting of PPSL for today’s discretionary hearing.

 

Before I go into the formal analysis and assessment I need to cover two issues. Firstly an alleged conflict of interest.

 

Councils have always had Permitted Development Rights to carry out works as part of their function.  When I first started over 30 years ago the limits were works not exceeding £100,000 and no change of use.  Nowadays the limits are £250,000.  If planning permission was required Councils had to go through a process known as Notification of Intention to Develop (NID).  They applied to themselves and if they were minded to approve it was passed to Scottish Government.

 

That process has changed.  Councils can grant themselves planning permission in the normal way.  If they have an interest in the site such as here Scottish Government makes it clear that there must be separate and distinct processes involved.  The marketing and sale of the site must be carried out by one section of the Council and the planning application by another.  In this case the marketing and sale of the site has been done by Estates and the planning application dealt with by Planning.  In certain cases a decision can still be referred to Scottish Government. Circular 3/2009 states that:

 

1. Development in which planning authorities have an interest

 

Development:

 

(a)    for which the planning authority is the applicant/developer;

(b)    in respect of which the planning authority has a financial or other (e.g. partnership) interest; or

(c)    to be located on land wholly or partly in the planning authority’s ownership or in which it has an interest;

 

in circumstances where the proposed development would be significantly contrary to the development plan for the area.

 

In this instance the proposed development would not be significantly contrary to the development plan.

 

We are often approached by developers seeking pre-application advice on a site. We set out the policy background and possible material considerations and give informal advice about the viability of the proposal. It always has a caveat in the advice is informal and may change depending on consultee responses and other third party representations. The Council as planning authority is required to assess planning applications having regard to the relevant provisions of the Local Development Plan, and to any other relevant material considerations. In this respect it is noted that the assessment of an application is about deciding on balance whether the relevant factors indicate that planning permission should be granted or not. In many cases the proposal will rest upon compliance with technical criteria where the difference between compliance or non-compliance is relatively clear cut, in others such as design and impact upon setting of the historic environment, the relevant criteria may be more open to interpretation and as such it is open to officers to form their own professional opinion on such matters in determining applications or preparing recommendations to the Planning, Protective Services and Licensing committee. Whilst officer’s recommendations may differ from the informal views expressing preference for a different design approach at an earlier stage in the process whilst seeking to negotiate improvement of the proposal with the developer, officers ultimately require to determine the application before them based upon all relevant consideration. In this instance the developer has subsequently made it clear that they do not intend to reduce the scale of development and accordingly officers are now faced with the task of assessing the current application as it stands notwithstanding any alternative preference on design options which they may previously have expressed informally.

 

Section 25 of the Planning Act requires planning applications to be assessed against Development Plan Policy and other material considerations. The Policy background is set out in the original report of handling. You also have three other Supplementary Reports for consideration which tidy up any loose ends in terms of late representations and consultee responses.  Since publication of these reports a further late representation has been received from Christine Woods who objected to this application as follows – “As a resident of Victoria Crescent I object to the potential increase of cars parked in Victoria Crescent and Victoria Road.  Victoria Road is already a heavily parked road and further congestion would be detrimental for residents living in Victoria Road and Victoria Crescent.”

 

At the last Hearing I did for Hunters Quay I got feedback from Members saying they found it useful when I flagged up what I considered to be the key issues. In this case I consider them as follows.

 

SITE BASED CRITERIA ASSESSMENT

 

IMPACT ON THE SETTING OF THE CATEGORY A LISTED CENOTAPH/WAR MEMORIAL

 

IMPACT ON THE CHARACTER AND APPEARANCE OF THE CONSERVATION AREA

 

Site based criteria assessment

 

In the Argyll and Bute Local Development Plan (LDP), the application site is located within the Main Town of Helensburgh within the Upper Helensburgh Conservation Area. Under Policy DM1 this area of land is defined as a Settlement Zone - Main Town (Helensburgh) where residential development of large scale is acceptable subject to a site based criteria assessment.

 

Planning permission is sought for the erection of a new care home for the elderly, consisting of sixty four bedrooms, staff accommodation, beauty salon and bars. The existing site was a former Council depot and has been used for some time as the Hermitage Park Depot consisting of a substantial 1960/70’s depot buildings with storage/garage space and workers’ amenity block. The irregular shaped site extends to approx. 3,172m2 and borders Hermitage Park along the south-eastern boundary, tenement properties to the north and sheltered  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.