A new approach to planning enforcement will go before Isle of Wight Cabinet members next week.
They will consider adopting a new planning enforcement strategy designed to make best use of the council’s severely limited resources and increased workloads.
Prioritising investigations
Under the new policy, the planning enforcement team will continue to investigate alleged breaches of planning control across the Island and assess the level of harm to understand the appropriate way forward.
However, cases that allege significant or irreparable harm to listed buildings, protected landscapes or protected trees will be treated as a priority. This would still be on a reactionary basis, responding when the council receives complaints.
Recent examples
Recent examples include prosecution proceedings relating to illegally removed protected trees in Gurnard, Shanklin and Luccombe and action being taken against the owners of the Ocean Hotel in Sandown.
The proposed strategy also includes the opportunity for parish, town and community councils to expand the council’s ‘core’ service by funding — either individually or collectively — extra capacity to address locally identified priorities.
Newport and Carisbrooke Community Council
This approach is already taking place with Newport and Carisbrooke Community Council.
The community council has identified priority sites, that include untidy buildings within Newport High Street, which are being investigated by a planning enforcement officer who is focussed on their sites for a defined period.
This has allowed the officer to contact numerous landowners, requiring them to regenerate land and buildings. The partnership began in April and the aim is that the project will assist in regenerating key areas of Newport and Carisbrooke.
Other improvements
Other improvements to planning enforcement are also proposed under the new strategy, such as making more information publicly available online including real-time performance statistics regarding how long investigations are taking.
Fuller: Planning enforcement will continue across the whole Island
Cllr Paul Fuller, Cabinet member for planning and enforcement, said,
“I think we need to be absolutely clear — planning enforcement will continue across the whole Island.
“Complaints will be properly investigated by our hard-working planning enforcement team with appropriate action taken where necessary.
“What we are proposing under this new strategy is building greater collaboration with our parish, town and community councils to explore opportunities to ‘top up’ this core service to provide extra capacity within the team.
“This further capacity could enable us to undertake additional enforcement on a proactive basis working to a set of local identified priorities, where locally this most matters.”
The council’s Cabinet will meet on Thursday 11th May to consider the new strategy which can be viewed on the Website.
News shared by Isle of Wight council press office, in their own words. Ed
