West Cumbria Mining - here we go again
I am deeply troubled by the implications of the decision by officers of Cumbria County Council to refer the planning application by West Cumbria Mining back to the council's DC&R (Development Control and Regulation, e.g. planning) committee yet again.
This application has been approved three times, twice unanimously, the third time by an overwhelming majority of elected councillors.
At all three of those meetings all or a majority of the elected representatives of each party group - e.g. Conservative, Labour, Lib/dem and Independent councillors - who had sat through hours of presentations, speeches for and against, and debate on the merits of the issue, and read hundreds of pages of reports, voted in favour. Those who voted to approve the application had both a democratic mandate to do take the decision and a far better grasp of the arguments and issues than people virtue-signalling from the other side of the county at best and at worst the other side of the Atlantic.
I would have argued yesterday that those people who argued that the government should block a decision that they didn't like on the basis of challenging whether the county council was competent to take the decision showed an arrogant contempt for local democracy.
Today I would have to acknowledge that people who have a rather different question for the county council - why on earth is it so difficult to issue a decision notice on a question which has been investigated in the most minute detail over several years and voted on three times? - may have a point.
After the proposal has been held up for years by objections from people who are desperate to find a way to stop a democratic decision they don't like, those objectors have found a way to put the council's officers in a position where they felt they had to send the application back to committee a fourth time.
I am all in favour of ensuring that those who object to a proposed development should have their concerns gone through thoroughly and completely - once.
But there comes a time when people go through the same arguments again and again and you have to ask, is this really still about assessing the merits of the proposal or is it a systematic attempt to abuse the planning system to kill by delay what they failed to defeat by planning arguments?
It the application has to come back to DC&R, than hold the DC&R committee as soon as possible, and if the application is approved for a fourth time, issue the decision notice that day.
The attempts to defeat by delay a proposal which has overwhelming local support within an hour's drive of where it is sited and has never been voted down by elected councillors has gone on long enough.
IT IS TIME TO TAKE A DECISION.
Comments
The proposal has been approved by three times by the councillors to whom the authority to determine the applications had been delegated by the council. This version of the application was approved by councillors in October.
The holding notice which temporarily prevented the implementation of that decision was withdrawn a month ago when the Secretary of State confirmed that he was not going to call in the application.
The council had confirmation much more recently from the government that this decision to let the council determine the application is not going to be reconsidered
I bent over backwards to word my concerns in a way which was not directly critical of council officers, and I do not accept that I have been unfair to them.
It makes it absolutely clear that the decision is back with Cumbria County Council and the government decision not to call the application in is not being reconsidered.
I don't know this for a fact so don't take this as an official statement or a leak, but I would happily bet you a tenner that within the next few days it will be announced that there will be a consultation on local government reorganisation in Cumbria and two other areas of England.
If I'm right about that, I am almost certain that the CCC elections will be postponed or, if a new structure is put in place, replaced by elections to new authorities, probably in 2022.
Police and Crime Commissioner elections and by-elections will go ahead in May 2021, however.
Hurrah! You agree at last. The matter is back with CCC DC&R to make an unconstrained decision. That's why there has to be another visit to the DC&R, This variation of the application, forced on WCM by Mrs Birkby's Judicial Review request, has never been determined and CCC are lucky that their minutes haven't been challenged - granting conditional approval while being in receipt of ministerial direction not to do so look careless to say the least.
I am no strategist but if I were in opposition to this mine I would already be lining up candidates for the next set of local elections as well as threatening every legal tool available to delay so that the the new council could decide. WCM have funded this for eight years; another 18 months wouldn't hurt.
I didn't write that the government had said it has to go back to DC&R, and they did not say that.
I wrote that the government had said that the decision was back with Cumbria County Council.
Nothing in the government's letters stops the council from implementing the decision DC&R has already made.
I have no doubt that the report to DC&R will explain why the officers of the council found it necessary to put the matter back to committee, but it will not be because the government said they had to.
If the Secretary of State does call it in then he or she or one of the junior ministers in what is now MHCLG determines it, do they determine it, if it is not called in the officers issue a decision notice in accordance with the decision of the committee unless there are exceptionally good reasons to bring it back.
I served on various planning committees over about sixteen years and was both chair of a planning committee and planning portfolio holder. Thousands of planning applications were determined on my watch - about 7,500 during my three years as planning portfolio holder alone - including a number of huge and massively controversial ones, some of them raising challenging national issues, one of them far bigger and nearly as controversial as the West Cumbria Mining application.
I cannot recall a single instance in that time of the officers of that authority bringing back an application to committee after the Secretary of State declined to call it in: I certainly do remember instances where they simply implemented the previous committee decision.
The application in its present form has been approved by councillors and any suggestion to the contrary is semantic logic-chopping worthy of the historical Jesuits.
https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/19084396.political-pressure-claim-challenged/
“It’s a local decision”, he said. “And the local decision has been taken by the county council’s planning panel on two occasions. And it’s passed on both occasions.
I took his reference to two occasions to refer to the decisions on two planning applications, which is what his department would have seen: the first planning application was brought back to committee when circumstances changed so it was voted on twice, hence my reference to three votes.
You can refer to it as having been passed twice or three times and a case can be made either way. It is not worth arguing about. What is not in dispute is that it had been to committee several times and every time they have voted unanimously or overwhelmingly for the mine on a cross-party basis.
The idea that there is pressure from the government to reverse the decision is coming solely from the overheated imagination of some journalists.
I am absolutely convinced that I would know about it if there was any pressure being exerted by the Secretary of State or the PM to reverse the decision, and I can categorically state that I have not heard or read the slightest hint that such pressure exists.
The people who, wrongly, say that permission has been granted three times are using language to advance a position. Considered three times and granted twice is the factual situation, so a third decision is clearly necessary.
The former is Mayor Starkie's assessment as well as mine (for the local decision quote is his. The Birkby forced revised application has not yet been decided on but, as you say, it doesn't matter. All that matters is the decision will have to be made at yet another meeting. Personally, I would reconvene the October meeting and limit discussion to only those things that have changed since then.
I did not write in the piece above that permission has been granted three times but that the mine has been approved three times by councillors.
The distinction between these two statements lies in the fact that the decision notice implementing the decision which councillors voted for has not been issued. Councillors did vote to grant planning permission but that decision has not been carried out.
Nevertheless my point that democratically elected councillors have voted three times to approve the mine is correct, and it is not difficult for anyone to check this as the minutes of DC&R are available on the county council website.
The relevant section of the minutes of the meeting of 2nd October at which councillors voted in favour of the most recent version of the application includes the following:
"The vote was cast as follows: 12 in favour, 3 against and 2 abstentions. Therefore it was RESOLVED that,
Having first taken into consideration the environmental information as defined in the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2011 submitted in connection with the application and the Habitats Regulations Assessment which concludes that there is no adverse effect from the project on the integrity of any European site, alone or in combination with any other plan or project and having taken into account all other material considerations, that Planning permission be GRANTED subject to:
i. the Secretary of State’s holding direction being lifted without the
application being called-in;
ii. the conditions set out in Appendix 1 to the report as updated in the
Committee meeting presentation; and
iii. the applicant (West Cumbria Mining) and other relevant interest holders
first entering into a Section 106 legal agreement with the County Council"
Just before that is the following clarification of the effect of the holding order by the secretary of state
"The Secretary of State had not made any decision to call-in the application nor was there any indication of what decision might be made. At this time, it was only a Holding Direction preventing the issue of the Decision Notice should the Committee resolve to grant planning permission until the Council heard further from the Secretary of State."
The Council has now heard further from him, he's not calling it in. The original decision could have been implemented. As it is going back to the committee I hope that they will make a clear decision which can then be implemented immediately, whatever it is, so that everyone knows where they stand.
"The Secretary of State hereby directs your Council not to grant permission on this application without specific authorisation".
1) that was a temporary holding directive while the Secretary of State was considering whether to call in the application
2) That he decided not to call it in six weeks ago
3) That the temporary holding directive lapsed at that point and no longer applies
4) That the holding directive did not stop councillors voting to approve the application, it just meant that such a decision could not be implemented until the Secretary of State decided not to call the application in.
Hence qualification (i) was included in the DC&R committee resolution quoted a couple of comments above this one from the minutes. That qualification has now been met and permission can be granted.
I do not mind genuine debate but I see no benefit to anyone in continuing with these word games. I have resisted the temptation to close the thread in case someone has a substantive point to make but I suggest it might be helpful to stick to points of substance in any further comments.
I have been chasing regularly on when it is likely that the application will come to committee. I have not formally been advised of a date but I understand that they expect so many representations for and against that a special meeting will probably be needed.