Parish Membership
12.1 The Council consults the relevant Parish or Parish Meeting on every planning application. Planning Officers may, on request, attend a Parish meeting early in the life of an application to explain the facts of the application and any relevant Development Plan policies.
12.2 Difficulties can arise for Elected Members who are members of a Parish Council as well as the Borough Council. By taking part in a Parish Council meeting when their comments on an application are agreed, a Borough Elected Member will be seen to have made up her/his mind in advance of hearing all the issues at the decision making Borough Council Committee. The Elected Member could be considered to have fettered his or her discretion. In those circumstances the Elected Member should not participate at the Borough Council meeting. In such cases the Elected Member has been excluded not because of the code but because the Elected Member’s previous actions had fettered his or her discretion and possibly laid the council open to the objection that the planning process had been tainted. So, an Elected Member has to choose whether to form a view at an early stage of the process and campaign for or against the planning applications but be excluded from the final decision-making; or reserve judgment until all views have been considered and only then form a view.
‘Dual’ Members should therefore either:
- not take part in the discussion of an application at the Parish Council meeting at which comments are agreed; or
- not take part in the discussion/decision on the application at the Borough Council’s Planning Committee;
Furthermore:
- although the consultation response from a Parish Council is a relevant consideration, Elected Members should not automatically defer to the Parish Council view, because Parish Councils do not have the advice of professional Planning Officers in reaching their decision.