CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Mat­ters Arising 20/09/2019

FOR DECISION

Title: REVIEW OF PLAN­NING COM­MIT­TEE STAND­ING ORDERS

Pre­pared by: DAV­ID CAMER­ON, DIR­ECT­OR OF COR­POR­ATE SER­VICES GAV­IN MILES, HEAD OF PLAN­NING & COMMUNITIES

Pur­pose

This paper presents a review of the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Stand­ing Orders for con­sid­er­a­tion by the Board. The paper fol­lows agree­ment of revised Stand­ing Orders for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity at the Board meet­ing of 14 June 2019, and action agreed at that meet­ing to under­take a review of Plan­ning Stand­ing Orders to ensure they are in keep­ing with the Board’s revised Stand­ing Orders.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Board is asked to:

a) Res­cind the Board’s agreed action of March 2019 to increase the quor­um for Plan­ning Com­mit­tee to 13 to be set out in the Committee’s Stand­ing Orders; b) Sub­ject to any fur­ther amend­ments agreed by the Board, approve the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Stand­ing Orders set out with this paper; c) Del­eg­ate author­ity to the Board Con­vener and Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Con­vener to sign off incor­por­a­tion of any fur­ther amend­ments agreed by the Board at its meet­ing, pri­or to updated stand­ing orders being brought into use.

Exec­ut­ive Summary

1. The Board agreed revised Stand­ing Orders for oper­a­tion of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Board and its Com­mit­tees at its meet­ing on 14 June 2019. https://cairngorms.co.uk/resource/docs/boardpapers/14062019/190614CNPABdPaper4Annex|BoardStandingOrders.pdf

2. Mem­bers agreed in June that a review of Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Stand­ing Orders was required in order to ensure effect­ive gov­ernance and con­sist­ency in oper­a­tions between the Board and Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Stand­ing Orders. Accord­ingly, a review of the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Stand­ing Orders was presen­ted to the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee at its meet­ing of 13 Septem­ber 2019. Papers sup­port­ing this dis­cus­sion may be accessed at: https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​/​p​l​a​n​n​i​n​g​-2019 – 09-13/

3. This paper presents the recom­men­ded Plan­ning Committee’s Stand­ing Orders fol­low­ing con­sid­er­a­tion by the Com­mit­tee on 13 Septem­ber. The pro­posed amended Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Stand­ing Orders are presen­ted in Annex I to this paper.

4. The Com­mit­tee is invited to con­sider the updated Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Stand­ing Orders; to con­sider wheth­er any fur­ther amend­ments are required; and to adopt the Stand­ing Orders for use by the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee sub­ject to any agreed amend­ments being incor­por­ated. Should any fur­ther amend­ments be agreed at the Board, it is sug­ges­ted that the Board del­eg­ates author­ity to the Board Con­vener and the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Con­ven­or to sign off those amend­ments pri­or to the updated Stand­ing orders being brought into use.

Sum­mary of Amend­ments to Cur­rent Stand­ing Orders

1. This sec­tion details the sug­ges­ted amend­ments made to the stand­ing orders, with explan­a­tions of changes where appro­pri­ate. These changes incor­por­ate all changes agreed by the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee at its meet­ing of 13 Septem­ber. Changes made are also high­lighted in track changes in Annex 1.

a) Para 2: cla­ri­fic­a­tion that the Com­mit­tee will be respons­ible for agree­ing its pro­vi­sion­al meet­ing dates and ven­ues. b) Para 5: cor­rect­ing present­a­tion only. c) Para 7: sig­ni­fic­ant change to deal with capa­city of Plan­ning Com­mit­tee to sus­pend the Stand­ing Orders endorsed by the Board. Lim­its the sus­pen­sion of stand­ing orders to mat­ters of quor­um for con­sid­er­a­tion of spe­cif­ic items of busi­ness, with agreed quor­um of 10 mem­bers still required to take decision to effect­ively reduce quor­um for spe­cif­ic items of busi­ness. Changes include a sug­ges­ted required min­im­um of sev­en mem­bers to remain present for any indi­vidu­al item of busi­ness. Note, these revised pro­vi­sions may be broken into a num­ber of para­graphs for clar­ity of read­ing in the final ver­sion. How­ever, to avoid con­fu­sion in cross-ref­er­en­cing with changes in para­graph num­ber­ing, the amend­ments have all been included in a single para­graph for the Board’s con­sid­er­a­tion. d) Para 9 and 10: cla­ri­fic­a­tion of treat­ment of any writ­ten rep­res­ent­a­tions made to mem­bers rather than to plan­ning offi­cials, fol­low­ing dis­cus­sion an Plan­ning Com­mit­tee of 13 Septem­ber. e) Paras 11 to 12: change ref­er­ence point of eli­gib­il­ity for mak­ing oral rep­res­ent­a­tions from the date of call-in to the rel­ev­ant Com­mit­tee date. Sub­sequent cla­ri­fic­a­tion agreed by Plan­ning Com­mit­tee meet­ing on eli­gible timetable for sub­mit­ting requests, and also that each indi­vidu­al request for an oral rep­res­ent­a­tion is to be con­sidered on its own mer­its by the Com­mit­tee. f) Para 13: is now restated as the cur­rent (2014) stand­ing orders giv­en the Committee’s agree­ment to remove the pro­posed amend­ment. g) Para 25: Sets out that a writ­ten recom­mend­a­tion estab­lishes an ​“ori­gin­al motion” as dis­cussed by Plan­ning Com­mit­tee 13 Septem­ber. Provides for poten­tial for a mem­ber to request or Con­ven­or to decide an adjourn­ment is required to seek pro­fes­sion­al and / or leg­al assist­ance on the word­ing or com­pet­ence of a poten­tial motion, togeth­er with expli­cit pro­vi­sion for meet­ing adjourn­ment in cases where word­ing of a motion or amend­ment requires to be writ­ten down and agreed. h) Para 26: amended to reflect that any pro­pos­al con­trary to an officer recom­mend­a­tion is now an amend­ment. i) Para 31: cla­ri­fic­a­tion of the pre­ced­ence in ter­min­o­logy of ​“ori­gin­al motion” where pro­posed minute or recom­mend­a­tion is moved and seconded. This is retained des­pite the adjust­ment around writ­ten officer recom­mend­a­tions being deemed the ​“ori­gin­al motion” as there may be even­tu­al­it­ies where there is no spe­cif­ic writ­ten recom­mend­a­tion. j) Para 32: was con­sidered poten­tially redund­ant giv­en the cla­ri­fic­a­tion that writ­ten officer recom­mend­a­tions would auto­mat­ic­ally rep­res­ent the motion to a meet­ing. On fur­ther reflec­tion, there could be instances where reports to Com­mit­tee do not carry spe­cif­ic recom­mend­a­tions and there­fore action such as set out in this para­graph of the Stand­ing Orders may still be required. k) Para 33: cla­ri­fic­a­tion and expli­cit state­ment of pro­cess of speak­ing to and vot­ing on amend­ments and ​“ori­gin­al motions”. l) Para 35: cla­ri­fic­a­tion of pro­cess should an item of busi­ness be ​“put to a motion” by mem­bers. m) Para 40: cla­ri­fic­a­tion that oper­a­tion­al decision-mak­ing by the officer group is not covered by the require­ment to estab­lish a scheme of del­eg­a­tion, and of the typ­ic­al activ­it­ies which are deemed oper­a­tion­al in nature. (See para­graph 8 of this paper for fur­ther explan­a­tion on this point.) n) Para 41 (deleted): sug­ges­ted remov­al of this para­graph as sus­pen­sion of stand­ing orders is now lim­ited to quor­um mat­ters and this is provided for elsewhere.

1. The Board is reques­ted to spe­cific­ally note that the pro­posed stand­ing orders retains the quor­um of the Com­mit­tee at 10 mem­bers. The Board had agreed in March that the quor­um should increase to 13 mem­bers (minute 20(m) of meet­ing held 29 March 2019). How­ever, the pro­posed stand­ing orders has adop­ted altern­ate con­trol meas­ures, such as mak­ing expli­cit that stand­ing orders may be sus­pen­ded only for reas­ons of con­sid­er­ing quor­um for items of busi­ness in the interests of effi­ciency of pub­lic ser­vice, and retain­ing a min­im­um of 7 mem­bers to be present in the event of any motion to sus­pend stand­ing orders. The Plan­ning Com­mit­tee believes the pro­posed stand­ing orders, inclus­ive of a stand­ard quor­um of 10 mem­bers, is appro­pri­ate for good gov­ernance and effi­cient deliv­ery of pub­lic business.

2. The Board is invited to con­sider the appro­pri­ate­ness and adequacy of these amend­ments and wheth­er any fur­ther changes to stand­ing orders are required.

Next Steps / Fur­ther Action

1. The Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Stand­ing Orders as now pro­posed deletes the ref­er­ence to a scheme of del­eg­a­tion to officers. On fur­ther reflec­tion, oper­a­tion through a writ­ten scheme of del­eg­a­tion affords a high risk of error ​“by emis­sion”: it is very dif­fi­cult to seek to ensure every pos­sible oper­a­tion or action by officers is appro­pri­ately covered in a scheme of del­eg­a­tion. There­fore, the Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices pro­poses this aspect of oper­a­tions is bet­ter covered through estab­lish­ing a Terms of Ref­er­ence for the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee which will set out reserved mat­ters of respons­ib­il­ity for the Com­mit­tee. The terms of ref­er­ence will be con­sidered by the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee pri­or to sub­mis­sion to the Board for approval.

2. Dis­cus­sion at Plan­ning Com­mit­tee also recog­nised the need to con­sider appro­pri­ate response by mem­bers should they receive rep­res­ent­a­tions on items of plan­ning busi­ness. While the pro­posed Stand­ing orders now includes brief cov­er­age of this (para­graph 9 of stand­ing orders in Annex 1), a guid­ance note under the terms of the Authority’s Code of Con­duct will also be drawn up to out­line required responses in such circumstances.

Dav­id Camer­on 13 Septem­ber 2019 davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk