Agenda, decisions and minutes

There were no apologies for absence.

To provide an opportunity for Members and Officers to declare any disclosable pecuniary and non-pecuniary interests in any item on the agenda.

There were no declarations of interest.

In accordance with Procedure Rules Nos.11 and 35 a period of 10 minutes is allocated for members of the public to address the meeting on any matter relevant to the work of the body in question.  Individual members of the public may speak for up to 5 minutes but the Chairman or person presiding will decide how the period of time allocated for public speaking will be apportioned where there are a number of speakers. Members of the public are not required to give notice to use this facility. However, as a matter of courtesy, a period of 24 hours’ notice is encouraged.

Members of the public wishing to ask a question at the meeting should provide at least three clear working days’ notice in writing and should include the question with that notice. This will enable an informed answer to be given.

No members of the public were present.

To consider a report on the charging of fee for consultations with Developer

That approval be given to a charging scheme for services delivered by the Public Rights of Way Team associated with developments affecting public rights of way, and that the fee for 2016/2017 be £45 per hour per officer plus travel costs.

Consideration was given to this matter by the Cabinet Member for Highways and Infrastructure to whom responsibilities and powers in respect of Public Rights of Way matters had been transferred by the Leader of the Council.  It was reported that the Public Rights of Way (PROW) team performed some functions as statutory duties and others as discretionary powers and that some of those functions could be fee chargeable whilst others were not.  As far as possible for those functions that could be fee chargeable the costs were recovered to reduce the overall service delivery costs to the Council. 

The PROW team, as an arm of the Highway Authority, is a statutory consultee on planning applications and is obliged to respond to consultations put to it by the local planning authority.  The extent of that obligation is to identify any public rights of way that may be affected by the proposed development and highlight the requirements upon the developer to protect the public right of way during the development process.  It is often the case, however, that to provide a more responsive and holistic service PROW officers are called upon to advise developers over mitigating the impact of development on the PROW network and the most effective means of changing the network to accommodate the development. 

Fees for involvement in meetings with developers and planners are already levied by Highways and are being developed by Environmental Health and the fee level now proposed had been established in discussions with officers from those services.  The PROW team already benchmark some fees to those of Highways and it is proposed that this schedule of fees will be benchmarked in a similar way. In setting the proposed fees officers had taken into account the actual costs and benchmarked with other services; the intention was to charge similar fees plus an element for travel when meetings were requested to be on site. 

RESOLVED

That approval be given to a charging scheme for services delivered by the Public Rights of Way Team associated with developments affecting public rights of way, and that the fee for 2016/2017 be £45 per hour per officer plus travel costs.