Development Control Members Briefing
What is Members’ Briefing?
Every Monday planning officers present to the Members’ Briefing Panel all those applications that, under the Constitution of the London Borough of Camden can be decided under powers delegated by elected members to officers.
The Members’ Briefing Panel is not a decision-making body. It is a mechanism that gives members an additional oversight of the delegated decision making procedure.
Who are the Panel?
The Panel is made up of the Chair and Vice Chair of the Development Control Committee and a third member of the committee from the Labour Group. The current members of the Panel are Councillors Roger Freeman, David Abrahams and Sue Vincent.
Decision making routes
Planning applications are decided either by:
- members on the Development Control Committee
- the director of culture and environment, under powers delegated by the General Purposes Committee and approved by all elected members at full Council
The Constitution of the London Borough of Camden sets out which decision route is appropriate.
The director has delegated powers to:
- refuse all applications that are clearly in conflict with the development plan which includes the Unitary Development Plan (UDP) policies
- approve all other applications that comply with UDP and related policies with the exception of certain applications specified in The Constitution of the London Borough of Camden relating to delegated powers.
Where there are outstanding objections on material planning grounds we do not exercise delegated powers to approve applications without first briefing members on the proposed decision through the Members’ Briefing Panel procedure.
Members’ Briefing procedure
It is important to note that the Members’ Briefing Panel does not decide the applications that are referred to it.
The Panel’s role is to consider the nature and extent of the outstanding objections and how the officer’s report responds to them, and either:
- advise that they are satisfied that the proposed decision proceeds under delegated powers; or
- advise that there would be benefits in the decision being made by the Development Control Committee.
The members look at the officer’s report, application drawings, relevant photographs and letters of objection, so that they can satisfy themselves that they understand the details of the proposed development and what is being objected to.
Examples of the types of applications that are considered by the Members’ Briefing Panel when there are outstanding objections are:
- householder alterations and extensions
- changes of use of small amounts of floorspace or, in the case of residential, involving the creation of less than five units
- minor extensions to Class A3/A4/A5 floorspace or minor variations to conditions
- applications involving simple legal agreements e.g. to make new flats “car free”
- minor applications where the council is the applicant.
How can I find out about applications Members’ Briefing Panel consider?
We prepare and publish the Weekly Members’ Briefing case list on this site every Friday evening for the meeting on Monday. The publication date is shown at the top of the list. Please note that there may occasionally be late additions to the case list for a particular Monday, for example where very late objections are received.
You can view the officers’ reports by visiting our planning application search page
The planning officer summarises comments received on the planning application(s) within the report. If you have additional planning comments which have not been covered in the report, you can put your views to the development control team
After the meeting on each Monday we will update and republish the case list to record the advice of the panel.
Following the advice of the Panel the director may decide to refer some applications for decision to the Development Control Committee. In these cases we will remove the officer report from the website. A committee report will then be finalised in each case and be made available five days before the committee meeting.