Agenda item

Pre-submitted Members questions are pursuant to rule 12 of the Council & Committee Procedure Rules.

Questions should be submitted by midday on Wednesday 30 October 2024 to Democratic Services, democratic.services@adur-worthing.gov.uk     

(Note: Member Question Time will operate for a maximum of 30 minutes.)

There were no pre-submitted Members Questions. 

A question was raised at the meeting by Councillor Gerry Thompson -

The question is regarding what some residents are calling ‘land grabbing’, by which they mean when other residents have put fences up around a piece of public land and then, in some cases, retrospectively asked for that to be permitted as their own land, thus taking away some public land that may have been used or valued by the community. There has been a recent case which has raised some planning questions that I would like to ask a question about tonight. This example involves a piece of land on a public pathway that was in the care of the West Sussex Highways department. A resident put a fence up round the piece of land, extending their own fence to include a mature cherry tree. Once that was done, they then applied for permission from the Highways department and sent them some inconclusive photographs, not really showing the whole position, and the Highways department agreed to it. Now they have applied for the final stage which is to close off that section of what is essentially a public highway.

The issues it has raised, in a planning aspect, is that we didn’t really have any sense that this was happening. Some residents consider there wasn’t proper informing of the community, some of whom may have had a view about it. Regarding possible future occurrences, is there a way of doing things differently so we can be more aware of these instances? Public land is a limited resource and a very sensitive issue. When some of this land is lost it’s gone forever and I think, as time goes on, public land is going to be regarded as more and more valuable as a community and environmental resource. 

The Interim Head of Planning & Development replied - 

In respect of that particular site, permission was sought and we found out about it retrospectively. The case officer made a site visit in the normal way and took photographs, which I’ve seen, and came to the conclusion that permission should be granted. I think the neighbours' concerns were that we didn't consult widely enough on the planning application. We met our normal criteria of consulting with the adjoining neighbours and with anyone whose land touches the site, so we consulted with 4 or 5 of the neighbours and none of those raised any comments. Because there was a wider estate impact some of the neighbours who weren’t the nearest were the ones who objected. In the future we may need to consider whether we should consult more widely. The resident concerned then applied separately for a Stopping Up order. The County Council Stopping Up order procedures are that they will put up a notice. Some of the wider community saw it and then found out that planning permission had already been granted. In terms of what happens in the future, those applications will appear on the weekly planning lists that are shared with councillors. Sometimes they are proposed and sometimes they are retrospective. We don’t have a policy regarding these because each individual case is different. We may see the application as a natural rounding off of a garden that doesn’t have a wider impact, in which case we may grant permission. If it is something that would adversely affect the character of an area and would be a significant loss of public space, we may refuse it. We’ve made decisions either way in the past and I can see that in this case there was a difference of opinion. In our view it was a natural rounding off of the garden which incorporated the tree, therefore we felt the application should be granted permission. If we receive any future applications that appear that they may be controversial, and they haven’t been called in, we will attempt to contact the appropriate ward councillor and draw their attention to it.

However, often these are not involving council land, they are mostly on Highways land and form part of what was the former highway. In general, the County Council won’t object because they are losing one of their maintenance requirements.

Councillor Gerry Thompson commented that he was reassured by the Officer stating that the Planning Officers will consider consulting with a wider neighbourhood in similar applications.