(a)

the Planning Department were exploring ways to more effectively engage the public, whilst reducing costs and improving standards and to do this a new Code of Publicity was proposed;

(b)

the public notices, used to advertise planning applications, had been improved by including QR codes, to enable smart phones to access the information and by ensuring that they were more user friendly;

(c)

ensuring public notices were situated in the best possible locations to inform the public on development proposals in their areas and that this would be achieved through a new process that had been instigated whereby ward members play a more proactive role and work with the planning department on the siting public notices following the recently agreed ‘Probity in Planning’ code;

(d)

this new Code of Publicity has simplified the process of siting public notices meaning that the code is less complicated and that everyone has equal access to view public notices;

(e)

a publicity campaign will be undertaken to promote the changes in the Code of Publicity and also the department propose to work with Plymouth Disability Action Network to ensure that all members of the community have the opportunity to be engaged on planning applications;

(f)

due to recent rises in postage the Planning Department would no longer be sending letters of notification to householders and letters would be replaced by increased use of public notices, with exceptions for members of the public who had difficulty accessing public notices due to disabilities;

(g)

the public notices would be written in plain English, although all notices use internationally recognised symbols informing residents that there are translation services available.

(h)

the Government set the fees for planning applications and as such the Planning Department had no control over fee setting, which means that the additional costs of postage could not be passed on to applicants;

(i)

the changes to the Code of Publicity and ‘Probity in Planning’ code  allowed a more flexible and more proactive engagement with local communities and stakeholders on development proposals and potentially, through the further development of a cooperative model of delivering planning services, a fundamentally different relationship between local citizens and the Local Planning Authority.

(1)

the proposed new approach advocated in the Code of Publicity is welcomed and supported;

(2)

theMonitoring Officer, is invited to attend the next meeting of the panel to provide a report which advises councillors when it is appropriate to use council resources for ward work, particularly in line with increased members involvement in planning applications and site notices.