Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Housing and Planning Decision Meeting - Thursday 11 December 2025, 9:30am - Cotswold District Council Webcasting

Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Housing and Planning Decision Meeting
Thursday, 11th December 2025 at 9:30am 

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  1. Councillor Juliet Layton
  2. Officer
  3. Julia Gibson, Officer
  4. Councillor Juliet Layton
  5. Officer
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  1. Councillor Juliet Layton
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1 Introductions

Councillor Juliet Layton - 0:00:06
Good morning and welcome to today's cabinet member decision making meeting. My name is
Councillor Juliet Layton and I'm the deputy leader and cabinet member for planning and
housing. I have two offices present here and I would like them to introduce themselves
and at the same time declare any interest they have in this meeting.
So...
Officer - 0:00:34
I'm Mark Harrison. I'm a Senior Planning Policy Officer focusing on neighbourhood plans.
Julia Gibson, Officer - 0:00:42
Good morning. I'm Julia Gibson, Democratic Services Officer.
Councillor Juliet Layton - 0:00:46
Thank you very much. Well, this meeting is being streamed live to the Council website
and all of the meeting papers are also available on the website, on the
council's website. So we will, you'll only hear if we're using microphones, so I
just I don't need to remind the two officers about this, so but we need to
switch them off between between them talking and other people talking. And
today's meeting is to approve the procurement of examination of the
Chipping Camden neighbourhood plan. We have no apologies, we've done the
declarations of interest.
So now I'm going to go over to Mark and ask him to give us a
bit of a briefing and talk about the annexes.
I know this is a very large paper.
There's been a lot of work here.
And the other thing I'm quite interested to know about is the
policies map, please.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Officer - 0:01:45
So chipping Camden.
Submitted their neighbourhood plan back in.
August.
So is before that we we run a reg 16 consultation.

4 Officer overview of the report

In August. And then following that.
The plan needs to be examined all of the comments that were.
collected and received go directly to the examiner.
We don't process those.
So it's an important part of the neighbourhood plan process toward adoption.
And this meeting is just essentially for Councillor Layton to approve that we proceed with the examination now.
that is a cost to Cotswold District Council to procure and examine it, we can
claim that back from the government. So within the financial year or if it falls
into the next financial year. So in spring 27 when we claim for it but we
we can claim that money back. To explain the annexes and all the documents,
annexes A to E are what Chip and Camden submitted to us and that have been consulted on.
So they're just there for information and reference.
I only stopped here recently.
I've come to this a bit late,
but I did notice there was a policies map missing,
which is a requirement in neighbourhood planning legislation
and national plan -making policies.
So there were maps within the plan itself,
but some of them were low resolution and sort of inset maps.
So, Sean Ashton, our very good GIS officer, has created some very nice high resolution maps,
just copying the boundaries across from the neighbourhood plan.
And that's at Annex F.
So that's the policies map that we've created.
And the town clerk at Chippenhampton and a couple of the steering group have had a quick
cheque over and they think it's fine.
Like I said, we're just copying the boundaries, but there's nothing new there.
Annex G is a note to an examiner, whoever that might be, when we procure them, explaining
the situation with the policies map.
Because that wasn't submitted by Chip and Camden and it hasn't been out for consultation,
the examiner's going to, if they choose,
recommend to sort of include it within the plan for purposes of
clarity in that the policies map is clearer than the maps that
are in there.
So that is just explaining that situation to them.
Yes.
Councillor Juliet Layton - 0:05:24
Can I just ask a question about that then?
do Chipping Camden, the neighbourhood development plan team, whoever's working on this, they know about that.
So they've approved the map, or they're probably very pleased actually that they've got this brilliant map there.
That's fine. So it's not going to be detrimental to this examination because they've already given a seal of approval,
even though it hasn't been consulted on, you know, publicly.
Officer - 0:05:56
Yeah, a bit time constrained. A few of them have checked over it.
But yeah, it's essentially for the examiner to recommend whether he or she wants to include the policies map for purposes of clarity.
I assume that they will, but if they don't, they don't have to recommend it.
In that case, it will just be left out.
But yeah, I just think it's a helpful aid and a requirement for anybody using the plan.
I will mention there were a couple of local green spaces that local green spaces normally
wouldn't include a highway.
And there were a couple, one was a sort of roundabout with a nice mature tree.
I forget the name.
This is all included in Annex G.
There's another one that's sort of around a road junction.
Normally you would exclude highways from local green spaces, especially as they haven't consulted
highways on those local green spaces.
And I just think when their maps were originally drawn, just because they're so small in context
of the whole parish, they've just drawn the whole area.
Because we were able to do it much more high resolution, we've excluded the highways, so
just the sort of grass verges and green areas.
Councillor Juliet Layton - 0:07:48
I'm just asking another question.
Is that patch of land owned by the town or by highways and the other...
and maybe it doesn't matter because they've identified it as a green space, but presumably
because of the tree.
So has that got a TPO on it?
And are they likely to be asking for that?
I'm just wondering how it becomes special enough because something else could happen
to the tree.
Officer - 0:08:23
Yeah, they could double up protection with TPOs, for example.
I can't remember off the top of my head the land ownership.
Hopefully it will be contained within one of the documents in the annex.
it's essential that the land ownership but I just was wondering about really I
guess about the team you know the importance of the tree and whether our
officers considered it was that it was as important as the town do but that
will be as you said it will be in the in the reps that the inspector look at yeah
I think the you know local green space it's identified for beauty and I think
these cases, tranquilly, because it's in urban areas, then you have this open sort of green area,
albeit around a traffic junction, you know, the trees will add to the beauty. And tranquilly,
whether that, I don't think it's entirely dependent on the trees. I think if the tree was
Hopefully not, but it would still be, still warrant local green space designation.
Just to continue on the annexes.
Annex H is all the reg 16 consultation responses that we received.
and I've collated and redacted.
Again, that's just sort of for information.
They're going to go directly to the examiner if we procure one.
So is that Annex H?
Can I, I'm happy to ask you, Julia, here,
because you said that Annex B was,
I thought that was the, no sorry, you said Annex F was the map.
Yes.
Which would be the design guide because that says, the annexes and the titling on this
report aren't quite matching.
So I don't know whether we need to square that up.
Not sure.
On the report paper on here, I don't know whether that is significant because it will
match up online anyway.
So I don't know, I just think we might maybe have a look at that afterwards.
It's not quite matching.
Sorry.
Sorry, I just downloaded it from our website.
So what I've got is Annex I is an invitation to quote.
So that I suppose is the main thing to agree today.
So within that document it's got a specification of what we require an examiner to do.
Sort of expectations and then how they price examining the plan.
And then we've got a sort of matrix about how we're going to, you know, if we receive,
need to receive at least two quotes procurement said.
So yeah, we've got a sort of price quality matrix about how we're going to assess the
bids that come in.
And that's based on, so the examiners will give a daily rate and then they'll estimate
how many days it's going to take them.
And they'll tell us their qualifications and experience and a list of plans they've worked
on before and hopefully outline some specialisms and if we're able to make a
choice we can sort of choose an examiner whose experience might be more closely
aligned to Chip and Camden and the contents of their plan. So that's all in
annex I and then the final annex J is just the terms and conditions for an appointment
that procurement provided. So yeah, just to summarise, as written on the report I'm looking
at, we've got annexes A to E which are what Ship and Camden submitted, which will go to
the examiner. We've got Annex F, a policies map that we've created. Annex G, which is
a sort of letter to an examiner explaining why we've created it and whether they would
consider recommending its inclusion into the neighbourhood plan. We've got the Annex H,
the reg 16 comments that will also go to the examiner and
annex I and annex J about the procurement of the examination.
Thank you very much.
That was actually, I thought it was going to be very simple and
actually it did rise a few questions.
So that was very good.
So the next process of this will be the examiner will consider the documents and
we'll go to reg, this is reg 17, so the next thing will be reg 18 which will
come back here for another decision -making meeting. So what the
recommendations are is that CDC will procure through a bid process an
independent examiner suitably qualified and experienced to undertake examination
of the Chipping Camden neighbourhood plan and the appointment must be consented by the
qualifying body, Chipping Camden Town Council. That's fine. Chipping Camden and an awful
lot of work on this. Oh, sorry, Mark.
Thanks. Sorry, I should just explain that where we get the bids in from the examiners,
it's a decision that has to be made in tandem with Chipping Camden Town Council.
Together?
Yeah, so I would perhaps
sift through them and make some recommendations, but they need to agree to

7 Cabinet Member questions

which examiner is chosen as well.
Councillor Juliet Layton - 0:15:44
Actually perhaps in this report we need to have Chippinghamden Town Council and CDC to qualify.
Okay, thank you. Well, yeah, I absolutely do approve those recommendations and thank you really for that
precise journey through the annexes because I know the whole document is
enormous and very well you know there's lots of glossy photos and that they've
done a really good job by the sounds of it and let's hope the examiner will be
equally approving. So yeah I approve those recommendations and thank you.
I think the reason is because I think we've fulfilled with through from 16 through the
consultation through the doing the consultation reps ready for the examiner. I think the document
is prepared and ready for examination. I think is that a sufficient reason? Yes. So it's
Yes, we've gone through the whole process.
And I can close the meeting at...