Agenda item

To receive any questions from members of the public addressed to Members of the Executive in accordance with Council Procedure Rule 11. There is up to 5 minutes for each question, one supplementary question may be asked arising from the original question.

Questions must relate to any matter the Council has power or which affects the District except no questions may be asked on

a)    A specific planning or licensing application

b)    A specific staffing appointment or appeal or Standards determination

Public question time will last up to 30 minute; questions will be taken in order of receipt. The deadline for submissions is Tuesday 26 Ocrober 2021 at 12 noon.

Questions to be submitted to democratic.services@adur-worthing.gov.uk

The Chairman advised that he had received 2 public questions in advance of the meeting.

Question 1 from Mr Andrew Harvey to the Executive Member for Regeneration

A new community group, Adur Communities Together (ACT), made up of a number of local interest groups, held a public meeting on Monday October 13th, which was attended by 167 local residents and watched on YouTube by over 400 more. Given the level of concern expressed at the meeting, and across the wider community, that our already struggling infrastructure will be overwhelmed by the accumulated proposed developments, will the council undertake a comprehensive review of their planning policies, including a focus on the effect of the developments as a whole rather than as individual projects.

The Executive Member for Regeneration replied that in preparing the Adur Local Plan, adopted in 2017, the Council had engaged with infrastructure providers such as West Sussex County Council, Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and statutory undertakers like Southern Water and the Environment Agency to assess the cumulative impact of all proposed developments.  The need for infrastructure improvements to mitigate the impact of new development was then collated into a document called the Infrastructure Delivery Plan which identified the requirement for development contributions to improve local roads, schools and health facilities (secured through s106 legal agreements). 

As required by the Local Plan Inspector, we have to review the Plan 5 years after adoption and the Council has started this process.  This will involve reviewing the Infrastructure Delivery Plan, looking at any opportunities to meet our future housing needs (the adopted Plan identified a 3,000 dwelling shortfall) and assess what further infrastructure improvements are required to mitigate the impact of any new development.

It should be noted that the planning process only requires new development to mitigate the impact of the development itself and cannot require existing infrastructure deficiencies to be resolved.

Question 2 from Christine Gunter to the Leader of the Council

Could the Council inform the residents of Adur when they are going to restore local democracy by again allowing members of the public to attend all Council Meetings.

Whilst I appreciate that these are challenging and unpredictable times, I believe Covid safe procedures could be followed to allow this to happen.

This is particularly important because in the very near future a number of planning applications for large developments will be coming before the Adur Planning Committee.

If passed these developments will severely impact on the lives of local residents so it is absolutely vital that we should be able to attend meetings to hear the debate and the decisions that are made.

The Leader replied that during the pandemic, it had been necessary to restrict the size of the public gallery at the Council’s meetings in order for participants to be socially distanced. To enable full transparency in relation to decision making, the Council’s meetings had been live streamed during this period.   Whilst not the same as in person meetings, many people had appreciated the fact that this provided access to a wider audience and as a result increased the transparency of our democratic process.

Following changes to HSE guidance, the public gallery for the Council’s meetings had been restored to pre-pandemic numbers as there was no longer a need to restrict the numbers of persons attending meetings as attendees did not need to be socially distanced.

Specific meeting arrangements for the determination of larger development applications, would be made on a case by case basis where possible but the Council would need to do so safely. 

The Council would continue to keep the situation under regular review, as it had been throughout the pandemic.