The meeting was reminded that the item had been deferred from the previous meeting of the Development Control Committee on 24 May 2012. following the rejection of the Officer’s recommendation to grant permission. Since then the applicants had lodged an appeal on the grounds of non-determination. The Committee still needed to decide how it would have determined the application so that it could respond to the appeal.

It was MOVED by Cllr. Miss. Thornton and duly seconded:

“That had the Council been able to determine the application planning permission would have been REFUSED on grounds of overdevelopment, detrimental impact on neighbouring properties and adverse impact on the street scene contrary to Core Strategy Policy SP1 and Local Plan Policy EN1.”

The mover of the motion suggested that the recent court case of R (Coupland) v Peterborough City Council allowed a decision to stand alone from its planning history if previous permissions had lapsed. An Officer advised that previous decisions and guidance are material factors, though there would be a question of the weight given to them, which depended on how much time had passed and how different those decisions were to the application in question.

A Member explained his concern was that the permission previously granted on appeal was across a significantly larger site. The density of the present application site would be greater than the overall density of the appeal decision.

The Chairman reminded the Committee that those who opposed the Officer recommendation would be expected to submit statements for the appeal

A request for a recorded vote was duly made and there voted

8 votes in favour of the motion

(Cllrs. Mrs. Ayres, Clark, Cooke, Gaywood, Mrs. Parkin, Piper, Miss. Thornton and Walshe)

7 votes against the motion

(Cllrs. Brookbank, Davison, Mrs. Dawson, McGarvey, Orridge, Scholey and Williamson)

2 abstentions

(Cllrs. Dickins and Ms. Lowe)

Resolved: That had the Council been able to determine the application planning permission would have been REFUSED on grounds of overdevelopment, detrimental impact on neighbouring properties and adverse impact on the street scene contrary to Core Strategy Policy SP1 and Local Plan Policy EN1.