Meetings

Dai Lloyd declared an interested as he has previously directly engaged with the petitioner.

Given that the proposal for third party appeal rights has been rejected by the Welsh Government – as it was during previous consideration given to this issue during scrutiny of the Planning (Wales) Act 2015 – it is difficult to identify how the Committee can take the petition any further. The Committee therefore agreed to close the petition and thank the petitioner for her contributions to the process.

The Committee heard evidence from the Minister for Housing and Local Government, Neil Hemington and Stephen Phipps. 

The Committee agreed to write back to the Minister to request further information in relation to several issues raised during the evidence session, including the potential for appeals where a planning application has been approved contrary to the contents of a local development plan, how decisions of planning inspectors can be challenged and processes for monitoring the performance of planning inspectors.

The Committee considered further correspondence from the Welsh Government and the petitioner. Members noted the correspondence and agreed to raise relevant issues during its evidence session with the Minister for Housing and Local Government on a number of planning-related petitions at its meeting on 25 June.

The Committee considered correspondence from the petitioner and agreed to:

• write to the Minister for Housing and Local Government to ask for her response to the additional comments provided by the petitioner and the contents of the paper produced by the Cardiff Environmental Law Foundation Clinic; and
• consider holding an evidence session with the Minister on several planning-related petitions at a future meeting.

The Committee considered correspondence from the Minister for Housing and Local Government, the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales and the petitioner and agreed to accept the petitioner’s offer to provide a further report on the reason why the law in this area needs to change, before considering what further action it could take.

The Committee considered the petition for the first time and agreed to:

• Write back to the Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs to ask her to respond to the detailed concerns of the petitioners.  The Committee indicated that it may wish to hold an evidence session on this and other planning matters in the future once it has considered the response received; and
• Write to the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales to:
• seek his views on the petition; and
• ask him to share any concerns he may have about the way in which local planning authorities take the views of third parties into account in the planning process.