Item9AAPlanningEnforcementCharterCtteePaper

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 9 24/09/2021

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR DECISION

Title: REVIEW OF PLAN­NING ENFORCE­MENT CHARTER Pre­pared by: Gav­in Miles, Head of Stra­tegic Plan­ning Emma Bryce, Plan­ning Man­ager (Devel­op­ment Management)

Pur­pose of the Report To seek approv­al of the Plan­ning Enforce­ment Charter for adop­tion and publication.

Recom­mend­a­tion That the Committee:

That the Com­mit­tee approve the Plan­ning Enforce­ment Charter for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority

Back­ground

1. Sec­tion 158A of the Plan­ning etc. (Scot­land) Act 2006 requires plan­ning author­it­ies to pre­pare an enforce­ment charter. The detailed require­ments are included with­in Plan­ning Cir­cu­lar 10/2009.
2. A plan­ning author­ity must keep their Charter under review and it must be reviewed and re-pub­lished every two years. More fre­quent reviews may be required if there are changes to the plan­ning enforce­ment sys­tem or legis­la­tion that affect it. Scot­tish Min­is­ters may also require the Charter to be reviewed on a more fre­quent basis.
3. Once the Charter is agreed by Scot­tish Min­is­ters, the plan­ning author­ity is required to pub­lish the Charter on the web­site and for cop­ies to be sent for dis­play in pub­lic lib­rar­ies with­in the plan­ning author­ity area.

The Plan­ning Enforce­ment Charter

1. The first Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity (CNPA) Plan­ning Enforce­ment Charter was ori­gin­ally approved by the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee in June 2009. It was first reviewed in Septem­ber 2014 and then again in 2015/2016. The cur­rently adop­ted Charter was approved by the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee on 29 June 2018 and sub­sequently adop­ted fol­low­ing approv­al by Scot­tish Min­is­ters. It is avail­able on the CNPA web­site at http://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​p​a​r​k​-​a​u​t​h​o​r​i​t​y​/​p​l​a​n​ning/. A num­ber of oth­er plan­ning author­it­ies have now adop­ted a sim­il­arly con­cise and simple format to their enforce­ment charters since the CNPA’s first such edit.
2. At some point in 2019, the date on the pub­lished Enforce­ment Charter that staff refer to was changed to Octo­ber 2019. This was an error that went unnoticed. Dur­ing 2020, the plan­ning ser­vice was focussed on main­tain­ing an effect­ive ser­vice deliv­ery and the date on the Charter led us to believe the date for repub­lish­ing would be Octo­ber 2021. The Charter is now tech­nic­ally 14 months older than it should be. There are no imme­di­ate con­sequences and as there are no changes pro­posed to the Charter, there has been no impact on any­one read­ing it. Nev­er­the­less, the CNPA may receive a red mark­er in a future Plan­ning Per­form­ance Frame­work Report. In order to avoid this hap­pen­ing in future, we pro­pose an annu­al plan­ning enforce­ment update for the com­mit­tee, with a sum­mary of enforce­ment activ­ity and annu­al review of the Charter.
3. The Charter is con­sidered to be fit for pur­pose, clearly and con­cisely explain­ing the way CNPA will carry out the plan­ning enforce­ment func­tion with­in the plan­ning ser­vice and with­in the con­text of the oth­er five loc­al plan­ning author­it­ies. There have been no legis­lat­ive or pro­ced­ur­al changes since the Charter’s pre­vi­ous adop­tion in June 2018. It has been used fre­quently to refer mem­bers of the pub­lic to when they make enforce­ment enquir­ies, where the Charter’s clar­ity and sim­pli­city is helpful.
4. It is there­fore recom­men­ded that the CNPA Plan­ning Enforce­ment Charter be approved by the CNPA Plan­ning Com­mit­tee again and sub­mit­ted to the Scot­tish Min­is­ters for approv­al, pri­or to form­al adop­tion and pub­lic­a­tion on the website.

Next Steps

1. Once agreed by the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee, the Charter will be sent to the Scot­tish Min­is­ters for approv­al. Once approved, the Charter will be pub­lished online and cop­ies will be sent for dis­play in all the pub­lic lib­rar­ies with­in the Park. The Plan­ning Enforce­ment Charter will be reviewed annu­ally in future, along­side an annu­al Plan­ning Com­mit­tee report on enforce­ment activity.

Gav­in Miles Emma Bryce Septem­ber 2021 gavinmiles@​cairngorms.​co.​uk emmabryce@​cairngorms.​co.​uk

Appen­dices

1. Draft Plan­ning Enforce­ment Charter