(i)

approaching Members of the Committee during the meeting:

reference was made to an incident which occurred at the last meeting whereby the Chair had asked someone who had approached a Member of the Committee to leave the room.  This person had been an officer of the City Council passing on a message and the Chair had since spoken to the officer and apologized.  It had, however, raised an important point about how this may impact upon public perception of the conduct of the meeting and bring into question the validity of decisions being made.  For this reason, the Chair asked all Members to refrain from requesting information or messages being passed to them during the meeting unless urgent, in which case they should be relayed through him.  In any other situation Members were advised to leave the room but remain mindful of their right to vote (or not) on an application should they miss any part of the debate;

(ii)

Planning Committee format and set-up:

as part of the review of the Code of Good Practice for Planning, the Chair drew the public’s attention to the customer feedback forms which had been placed around the Council Chamber and stated that comments on the Planning Committee process and set-up would very much be welcomed to help inform this review.