Agenda item

To receive any questions from members of the public and replies thereto.

 

Note:   A maximum of 30 minutes is allowed for this item.

GOFF WELCHMAN  (0:04:05)

 

Question 1:

When agenda item 6 is discussed, would this Committee now challenge the Cabinet’s refusal to allow debate in Full Council of the canal conservation area petition when their action clearly breached the Council’s own constitution on petitions appendix D and yet neither the Chair nor the Monitoring Officer identified that breach during the meeting.

 

Question 2:

Non compliance with conditions/planning obligations resulting in harm to residential amenity or non significant harm to trees is given medium priority. Under low priority it states non compliance with other conditions.

 

The scope of conditions that are therefore not going to be enforced are enormous.  

 

Not all conditions are in place to protect either trees or residential amenity.  What about those safeguarding the landscape, biodiversity, ensuring adequate drainage, appropriate lighting, road safety? 

 

It is exactly the same with the change of use.  It is only going to be enforced if residential amenity is impacted (or a tree).  This is huge.

 

When debating the Enforcement Policy agenda item would this Committee fully review the position and request a redraft of the Policy as required.  If not, why not?

 

The Chair explained that as the questions had not been provided in writing in advance of the meeting that a written response would be provided.

 

 

BARRY WARREN (0:06:17)

 

Statement: I have read the report and appendices for this item and can find no mention of information requests, or the people who make them.

 

The Council’s “Complaints and Feedback Policy” was updated in March 2024 and included requests for information, in Section 10, under the heading Unreasonable, unreasonably persistent, and vexatious complainants.

 

I quote one sentence under this heading: “The term complaint in this guidance also covers requests made under access to information law such as the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Data Protection Act 2018.”

 

Classing requests for information as complaints means that statistics will be recorded and collated for these Unreasonable, unreasonably persistent, and vexatious complainantsyet they do not appear in this report, or the attached appendices.

 

Question 1.  How was such information collected and recorded?

 

Answer: The Council did not class requests for information under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act as complaints.  There were two distinct policies and processes that govern the way the Council deals with complaints and requests for information. 

The reference under the Complaints and Feedback policy alluded to guidance on the identification of unreasonable, unreasonably persistent, or vexatious contacts with the Council. 

 

Under FOI the request and not the requestor would be deemed vexatious.  The Council holds records of FOI requests for two years, and in this time we have not identified a request as vexatious.  Therefore we hold no records for this.

 

 

Question 2.  How was such information made available for public scrutiny?

 

Answer: As stated, the Council did not record Information about vexatious complainants, we had no information of them with regard to FOI requests. However, on the complaints policy this would be a matter between the Complainant and the Authority and would be protected under General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), under those circumstances the Council would not put that information into the public forum.

 

Question 3.  How are such complaints and individuals reported to elected members?

 

Answer: As per section 11 of the Complaints and Feedback policy – “The Council’s District Solicitor would notify the relevant officers, the complainant and where appropriate the Ward Member in writing of the reason the complaint or complainant has been classed as unreasonable, persistent, or vexatious and of the actions to be taken.”  The Council did not treat requests for information as complaints.

 

 

Statement: Requests for information were made by means of a ‘request’.  If the request was not answered properly then a ‘review’ would be requested.  If that review still did not satisfy the enquirer, then a ‘Complaint’ would be made – not to the Council, but to the Information Commissioner, who will adjudicate on the matter.

 

Paragraph 4.2 of the report advised that only one complaint was upheld by the Ombudsman but no mention was made of findings by the Information Commissioner in what could be classified as complaints against the Council.

 

Question 4.  Why are the outcomes from the Information Commissioner investigations not made available by MDDC for the public to inspect?

 

Answer:  Requests for information were not dealt with as complaints.  The Information Commissioner would publish the outcomes of all investigations or cases which had been referred to them on their own website.

 

Question 5.  How and where is this information reported to elected members?

 

Answer: Requests for information were not dealt with as complaints, and therefore not reported to elected Members within complaints data.

 

Statement: Finally

The policy defines ‘Unreasonable’, ‘Persistent’ and ‘Vexatious’ and then says, and I quote: “The policy is intended to assist in managing people by categorising them within these terms and agreeing the actions to be taken.”

 

Question 6.  Who is responsible for “categorising” people in these terms?

 

Answer: This was done by the service manager liaising with the District Solicitor or the legal department to ensure that there was evidence to categorise whether a person was making unreasonable, unreasonably persistent or vexatious complaints to the Council.  This was agreed with the District Solicitor, see section 11 of the Complaints & Feedback policy.

 

Question 7.  Who will be “agreeing” the “actions to be taken”? 

 

Answer:  The District Solicitor as per section 11 of the Complaints & Feedback policy.

 

Question 8. Are any risk assessments done on “categorised” persons?

 

Answer:  Consideration of complainant circumstances was always taken into account.  This was done by liaison with services affected by regular or persistent contact with the individual to ensure any safeguarding or special characteristics were taken into account so that the Council’s response was proportionate and met our responsibilities as a Council.

 

Question 9. How will any of this assist in “managing” the persons so “categorised”?

 

Answer:  Officers and Members would endeavour to respond appropriately according to the individual complainant’s needs, and in compliance with our complaints policy, but this guidance was to cover occasions where nothing further could be reasonably done to assist or rectify a real or perceived problem.

 

 

Answers provided by the Head of Digital Transformation and Customer Engagement.

 

Mr Warren asked a supplementary Question, in order to clarify, that Freedom of Information requests and outcomes are not reported to Members in any format?

 

Answer:  The Council did not report these directly but did have a publication scheme on its website where the Council reported quarterly on the FOI requests that had been received.

 

Discussion took place with regard to: on FOI decisions, the vast majority supported the Council’s position, however, the Council did not, as a policy, publish those decisions for Members or the public to see on the Council’s own website. Councillors asked why not because the Council could be seen as justified in doing so on behalf of its ratepayers. Who was the quarterly report distributed to? Officers were encouraged to make the whole process as transparent as possible.

 

Answer:  The information could in future be reported to the appropriate Policy Development Group. The quarterly report was published on the Council’s website and could be found by searching FOI.

 

 

 

PAUL ELSTONE  (0:18:58)

 

Question 1:

I note that the drafting of the MDDC Enforcement document closely resembled the East Devon District Council’s same policy. Unfortunately, the Process Flow Chart – Page 14 had been corrupted in the process.

 

I would draw your attention to the large block in the middle of the chart starting with the words “Breach identified, and no further action required”. There was no feedback to the person who reported the breach.

 

Additionally, there was nothing in the flow chart that showed how the high, medium and low priority system functions. 

 

There were several other significant failings in the flow chart and which I believe fully warrants a redraft. Possibly better and, for clarity, two separate flow charts were required.

 

When debating the Enforcement agenda item would this Committee recommend a redraft of the flow chart is required and if not why not?

 

 

Question 2:

The intent of the Enforcement Policy as stated in the National Policy Framework was to maintain confidence in the planning system.

 

The proposed procedure was very subjective when setting priorities - which was one of the most important parts in making the enforcement system work, given the limited resources available.

 

A priority system should be open to scrutiny.

 

In Mid Devon the planning system was clearly being very substantially abused by some and had been for several years. Persons who had benefitted massively financially but in doing so had caused substantial detriment to many, this due to the lack of any proper enforcement.

 

As an example, there is one industrial facility at Crownhill Halberton and which due to a series of planning condition breaches going back 5 years, had caused the following concerns:

 

Firstly - Traffic and pedestrian safety issues impacting on school pupils.

 

Conditions and Transport statements should prevent traffic from this facility from passing through the Blundells School Campus but up to 200 tractor movements a day had been recorded. Tractors driving on pavements and tractor trailer skid marks at pedestrian crossings should be a warning to the risks that exist. 

 

Secondly - Noise and dust and odour issues which were elevated due to condition breaches.

 

Thirdly - Impacts on the Grand Western Canal Conservation Area 

 

Each of these three impacts deserve a high priority classification, in its own right, according to the policy.

 

Therefore, when the three impacts were considered together the planning breaches should demand the very highest level of priority classification. The proposed policy, however, did not recognise this.

 

When establishing enforcement priorities could I suggest that MDDC adopted a scoring system - not unlike the system used to score whether a tree merits a Tree Protection Order. This would be able to weight cumulative planning breach exposures.

 

When debating the Enforcement agenda item would this Committee recommend that a scoring system, similar to the Tree Protection Order system, be fully considered and made to form part of thin enforcement policy and if not why not? 

 

 

The Chair explained that as those questions had not been provided in writing in advance of the meeting that written responses would be provided.