Issue - meetings

There were none.

It was noted that following advice from the Council’s Monitoring Officer, it was the recommendation of the Head of Planning and Development that applications 18/506656/FULL (Popesfield, Bearsted Road, Weavering, Kent) and 18/506609/OUT (Newnham Park, Bearsted Road, Weavering, Kent) should not be determined until after the local elections on 2 May 2019 due to their controversial nature.

The Chairman said that taking all matters into consideration, the difficulty in drawing a line as to what constituted “controversial” and based on case law, it was his view that the Committee should proceed to determine these applications at the meeting.  All commentaries legal and otherwise stated that provided a decision maker takes into account only matters that are material that decision cannot be open to question.  The Committee had been careful over the years to make its planning decisions based only on material planning considerations.  In the unlikely event that it did not, the Council had procedures in place to deal with that.

Since no Members indicated that they considered that these applications should be withdrawn from the agenda, the Chairman said that the Committee would proceed to determine the applications at the meeting.