Would you or I get away with this?
Exmouth Town Council arranging hurried meeting on 6 January 2018.
Let’s see what they think (Tory dominated, don’t build up you expectations!)
From EDDC to Town Councillors – how to justify the unjustifiable!
One for the Scrutiny Committee? Oh no, wait – not allowed to discuss individual planning applications! But maybe CAN investigate how there are double standards in planning – one for their own officers and one for everyone else.
No – even that’s not right! One for EDDC and its developers and one for the rest of us.
“Queen’s Drive Temporary Uses Planning Application Response to Concerns Raised by Exmouth Town Council
1. CONCERN ABOUT TOO LITTLE DETAIL IN THE APPLICATION.
The lack of detail in the planning application is a result of the tight timescale that we are faced with in delivering the temporary uses.
Time is a key driver for the delivery of the Temporary Uses project. We aim to have new facilities available by early spring 2018.
In order to achieve this, we have to secure a planning permission first, before starting work on the installation of the new facilities.
We also have to go through the research and then procurement process to find the suppliers (and operators where appropriate) for the new facilities.
We realised that if we are to achieve this tight timetable, we would need to undertake tasks concurrently. So we would need to submit a planning application without necessarily knowing the detail of exactly what the facilities would be and who would be supplying them.
We discussed this with our planning advisor and the Local Planning Authority and identified that we could submit a planning application that provided a general description of what we propose to do (and was therefore without too much detail), where (if approved at committee), the planning authority could put conditions on the permission and request the detail at a later time.
We agreed on a strategy for the planning application that would show the three zones for the three different “themes” of what will be on offer. Namely: children’s play, food and drink, and a range of one-off events.
2. CONCERNS ABOUT RESIDENTIAL AREA AND NOISE.
The District Council will have to apply for necessary licences to cover the hours of opening for the operation of the events on site. Again, as yet we do not know the detail of what the events will be as we are still in the research and planning stages. We would not expect that any event would be later than midnight. But note that this will only be on odd occasions – not every night. This application will be heard by the Licensing Committee in due course.
3. CONCERNS ABOUT THE FILLING IN OF THE PONDS.
We do not yet know the specific engineering solution for how the ponds will be filled in. It is thought that this will be loose material topped with sand. Whatever is used to fill the ponds could be removed in the future if required.
4. CONCERNS ABOUT THE TIMING OF SUBMISSION.
We are aiming for the application to be heard at DMC on 6 March 2018.
To meet this date and allow for the lead in period for the application to be processed, we therefore had to submit the application before Christmas (early December). It was not until early December that we had finalised the application ready for submission.
Alison Hayward
EDDC 3 January 2018”
East Devon Watch 