Agenda item

Report by the Director for Planning & Place and Director of Law & Governance (PN6).

This report considers the adoption of a revised Routeing Agreements Protocol further to the adopted motion by Councillor Mike Fox-Davies at the meeting of the County Council on 27 March 2018.

It is RECOMMENDED that the revised Routeing Agreements Protocol set out in Annex 2 to the report PN6 be adopted.

On 27 March 2018 the County Council approved a motion by Councillor Fox-Davies in the following terms:

“Many approvals for planning permission are granted, subject to routeing agreements, (normally for HGV traffic). These form a contract with the applicant. If these agreements are not followed, there is limited power of enforcement. Once granted the permission cannot be removed, the only enforcement process is for the applicant to be pursued through the civil court.

This is currently embedded in planning law. Whilst many applicants will abide by the legal agreements, there is no easy deterrent for applicants who flout them.

As a rural Council with many villages affected by HGV movements, we feel strongly that the law in this area needs to be amended. This Council requests that the Planning & Regulation Committee strengthen the existing OCC planning protocols to include measures to enable easy redress following persistent breaches such as the retention of a financial performance bond, with the necessary mechanism for any persistent breaches of the routeing agreements.

Additionally, this Council asks that the Leader of the Council Lobby every MP in Oxfordshire to support this change and raise a back-bench motion in Parliament, to strengthen the UK planning law to allow local authorities more redress when conditions or legal agreements entered by contractors are persistently breached.”

In the light of that approved motion the Committee considered (PN6) a revised routeing agreements protocol based on the terms of the six options which comprised the existing routeing protocol as agreed in September 2016 and which applied only to applications which the County Council itself determined as Minerals and Waste Planning Authority together with an additional option to meet the terms of Councillor Fox-Davies’ motion as follows:

“7) If an application is received:

a)     and there is a history of substantiated, persistent or flagrant breaches by an applicant of the terms of an existing routeing agreement, a security deposit will be required from the applicant at the outset when entering into the new routeing agreement.

b)     for a site in a part of the county where there has been an ongoing concern with regard to existing vehicle movements but there has been no history of non-compliance on the part of the applicant, the routeing agreement will include a provision that if the Council reasonably determines later that there have been substantiated, persistent or flagrant breaches of that agreement then operations will cease until a security deposit has been paid to the County Council 

In either case, the security deposit would be used to fund the council’s costs incurred in monitoring the agreement, investigating suspected breaches of the agreement and securing compliance with the agreement, as necessary. The security deposit would not normally exceed an amount of £1,000 per year for the number of years the development is permitted.”

Councillor Fox-Davies agreed in principle with the terms of the additional option but considered a more appropriate figure for a security deposit would be £5,000 per year or a minimum of £25,000 in order to encourage operators not to break the terms of a routeing agreement and he so moved.  Councillor Webber seconded the motion which was then put to the Committee and –

RESOLVED: (by 9 votes to 0 with one abstention) that the revised Routeing Agreements Protocol set out in Annex 2 to the officer’s report PN6 be adopted subject to amending the final sentence in paragraph 7) of that protocol to read as follows:

“The security deposit would not normally exceed an amount of £5,000 per year for the number of years the development is permitted or a minimum of £25,000.”