Issue - meetings

To inform Cabinet of the requirement for the Council to prepare and maintain a ‘Brownfield Land Register’ (the Register) and to seek formal approval for the publication of Part 1 of the Register.

RESOLVED that –

(a)    the Cabinet approves, retrospectively, the publication of Part 1 of the Council’s Brownfield Land Register, as attached at Appendix 1 to item A.2 of the report of the Corporate Enforcement Portfolio Holder; and

(b)   the Head of Planning Services be authorised to publish, review and maintain Part 1 of the Brownfield Land Register in accordance with the criteria set out within the aforementioned report.

The Cabinet gave consideration to a report of the Corporate Enforcement portfolio Holder (A.2) which informed it of the legal requirement for local planning authorities to prepare, publish and maintain a ‘Brownfield Land Register’ (the Register) and to seek formal approval for the publication of Part 1 of the Register and a delegation to Officers to publish future updates.

It was reported that under the Housing and Planning Act 2016, the Council was required to prepare, maintain and publish a ‘Brownfield Land Register’ comprising two parts, namely:-

Part 1 of the Register was simply a list of sites within the District that qualified as ‘Brownfield’ (i.e. previously developed) and that were considered to be suitable for development, when assessed against the criteria set out in Regulation 3 of the Town and Country Planning (Brownfield Land Register) Regulations 2017.

Part 2 was a subset of Part 1 of the Register and comprised certain sites on the Register that, by virtue of their inclusion in Part 2, granted ‘planning permission in principle’, avoiding the need for landowners and developers to apply for outline planning permission and enabling them to progress through the planning process more swiftly, with only matters of detail requiring the Council’s approval.

Members were informed that requiring Councils to produce a Brownfield Land Register was one of the Government’s measures to speed up the planning process and boost the supply of new housing.

The Cabinet was made aware that in line with Government requirements, the Council had published its Part 1 Register before the deadline of 31 December 2017. However, Officers had subsequently learnt that the publication of Part 1 should have been approved by the Cabinet. The report now before the Cabinet sought its retrospective approval to publish the Register and to delegate this responsibility in the future to the Head of Planning. The Part 1 register published by the Council last year only included sites that had either already obtained planning permission in the past or had been allocated in the emerging Local Plan – i.e. sites where the principle of development had already been accepted by the Council. 

Members were informed that the authority for approving Part 2 of the Register lay with the Planning Committee who would be invited to grant planning permission, in principle, for certain sites, as appropriate, in due course.

Having considered the contents of the report:-

It was moved by Councillor Nicholls, seconded by Councillor P B Honeywood and:-

RESOLVED that –

(a)   the Cabinet approves, retrospectively, the publication of Part 1 of the Council’s Brownfield Land Register, as attached at Appendix 1 to item A.2 of the report of the Corporate Enforcement Portfolio Holder; and

(b)   the Head of Planning Services be authorised to publish, review and maintain Part 1 of the Brownfield Land Register in accordance with the criteria set out within the aforementioned report.