North East Derbyshire Statement of Community Involvement 2023

Commenting on behalf of Dronfield Civic Society:

A There is no commitment made here about planning applications handled by the County Council. DCC states that any applications involving waste, minerals, and DCC properties, will be handled by DCC. The District Council Development Management team should commit to any such proposal being fully visible and open to public consultation through NEDDC processes.

B There is no commitment here to key performance indicators. We have seen cases where applications wait for inordinately long periods to be resolved causing concern and confusion in the community, and equally others that seem to be expedited with no consideration of public concerns. We’ve seen applications go through under delegated approval where there have been clear errors in the process and consequential bad decisions made. The Development Management team should have a series of KPIs to measure effectiveness of their processes and their public engagement.

C There is no commitment here to an engagement and feedback mechanism for the public and relevant groups to liaise with the Development Management leadership about how the processes are working, and specifically where there have been failures, how we work together to prevent recurrence. At the moment the only feedback process seems to be through the general NEDDC processes, and where issues are raised there are no responses. The NEDDC Development Management team could be more successful through feedback and collaboration with community groups.

Commenting on behalf of Dronfield Civic Society:

Publicising in local newspapers doesn’t reflect current trends. It would be better to use a social media platform that the public can opt into. Also the ‘public posting’ process needs to have appropriate checks from the Development Management team - we have seen cases of notices positioned as much to obscure as publicise, posted late or not at all, and neighbour notification failings.

Commenting on behalf of Dronfield Civic Society:

exclusions in 3.6 should not take precedence over conservation areas or listed buildings. For example, advertisements in a conservation area should involve public consultation.

Commenting on behalf of Dronfield Civic Society:

3.8 there needs to be active scrutiny and review of what is posted online. We’ve seen examples where material is illegible or unreadable, including poor scanning or corrupted file uploads. There needs to be a way for public feedback to the Development Management team where material posted is unable to support proper scrutiny through errors or omissions and for those to be resolved rapidly so that time is not lost from the consultation period.
3.14 there needs to be active scrutiny and if necessary clarification posted by the Development Management team when multiple applications exist for a single location. We’ve seen instances of multiple applications with overlapping proposals and subsequent confusion for all involved. The Development Management team also need to scrutinise and address where development creep is being achieved by sequential applications, such as first applying to take public land as a garden, and then applying to use that garden for a building extension.

Commenting on behalf of Dronfield Civic Society:

3.19 the document should set out clear criteria for acceptable delegation of applications. It seems that at present it relies on individual councillors to spot a troublesome application to prevent it going through as delegated approval. A specific set of criteria to determine those safe to be delegated would be more appropriate and would be fail-safe.

Commenting on behalf of Dronfield Civic Society:

3.31 the Development Management team should make clear the committed timelines for enforcement action where there has been a breach. The public can and will get involved where through malicious intent or otherwise development actions have been taken to the detriment of the community. Stopping these destructive acts will be far easier when it is clear that swift and decisive action will be taken by the district council team.

comment on behalf of Dronfield Civic Society:

2.10 it is understandable that General Consultation Bodies would not be in an infrequently-updated formal document. However there must be a list maintained in the department, and it would be easy to make this an online list so that the community can see at any time the current list.