Planning - Newcombe House site
Question by John Learmonth
- Appears at 00:57:45 in Council Meeting Webcast on 18 July 2018
Cllr Will Pascall, the Lead Member for Planning, believes that the time provided by the Mayor of London for residents to comment on this application is insufficient given the timing of the matter over summer.
The Council’s Executive Director, Planning and Borough Development wrote to the Greater London Authority's (GLA) Chief Planner on the night of the Council meeting, shortly after this issue was raised, asking her to extend the consultation period for the amendments until the end of September. The GLA responded, declining the request for an extended consultation period, and giving the following reason:
“We have given a timescale for comments of more than 28 days, which is in excess of legal requirements and in my view more than adequate given that this consultation relates to amendments to an existing application, which residents should already have knowledge of. We have also sought to avoid the summer break as much as possible.”
Cllr Pascall was dissatisfied with this response and has personally written to the Mayor to ask him to extend the consultation period for an additional four weeks.
The GLA’s response already received indicates that the Mayor of London is likely to hear the case on 18 September 2018. The hearing will be announced formally at least 14 days beforehand, and a report on the application from the GLA’s Chief Planner will be published at least 7 days beforehand. Any comments on the application received by the Mayor up to the hearing will be considered, but the GLA Chief Planner has advised that comments should be received by her team prior to the end of August. These should be sent by email to [email protected] using the reference number 3109a.
The Council’s Planning Committee considered the Council’s response to the amendments on 7 August: the meeting decided to maintain its position of objecting to the application and as a result the Council is writing to the Mayor of London to inform him of this position.