Written evidence submitted by Woodhouse Parish Council [OSG 111]
We have limited experience of scrutiny committees but had input to a district council S106 scrutiny panel and one on speed control. We had made so many complaints about these issues that they might have been part of the reason for establishing the panel.
We were invited to attend the S106 scrutiny panel inaugural meeting and were allowed to submit written evidence afterwards. Our main complaint had been how S106 agreements were drafted without input from the community – officers appeared to have their own ideas on what we might need. Other parishes and wards had similar concerns. The S106 ‘awarded’ over £75,000 towards a piece of public art, an amount that the members would have preferred to deploy on other things that were more important to them. Our parish had similar problems over the only S106 agreement that is linked to development here. However, continual lobbying resulted in some virement towards a project that this parish council considered to be a higher priority.
Secondly, we complained that the impact of developments either side of the parish were not included in the thinking behind the S196 agreements. For example, a long-running traffic speed problem could have been addressed in an upstream S106 agreement, whose vehicles passed through to an arterial road. In another example, another parish that was downstream of a very large development in a neighbouring parish, stated that, as it was so close, the residents from the new development would be funnelled to the downstream car park and shops, which would be unable to cope.
An end product of this scrutiny panel was the recommendation for officers to consult parishes. However, this was translated into asking them to review and update a poorly researched survey of parish amenities over 5 years old that had been undertaken by external consultants and which this parish had criticised as inaccurate at the time it was published.
Officers appeared to consult that old list when drafting S106 agreements. However, in many parishes, long-range planning is not a factor, possibly not feasible. The turnover of councillors and clerks at parish level in small settlements can prevent forward planning. So projects ‘crop up’ as things decay or priorities change. There simply isn’t the resource to develop sound, long-term business plans. Many parishes lack members after elections and struggle to fill vacancies by co-option. With more and more localism, in small settlements there is a tendency towards volunteer fatigue, and possibly burnout.
QUESTION: did that scrutiny panel succeed?
ANSWER: only in part.
REMEDIES:
[a] consult community when a development permission is being considered;
[b] consider and consult downstream parishes that will be affected