Agenda item

Introductions

The Town Clerk opened the meeting by introducing herself and stating that the Committee was quorate.

A roll call of Members present was undertaken.

The Town Clerk highlighted that the meeting was being recorded as well as live streamed and would be made available on the City Corporation’s YouTube page for a period of time after the meeting had concluded. With this in mind, it was confirmed that participants in the meeting had all individually agreed and given their consent to being recorded and that all personal data would be processed in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018. The Town Clerk highlighted that, for further information on this, viewers could contact the City Corporation using the details provided on the public webpages.

In response to a question regarding why this particular application was to be heard by a Special Sub-Committee of the Planning and Transportation Committee and how that Sub-Committee had been formed, the Chair reported that the membership comprised those members of the Grand Committee who were not precluded in being able to listen to and decide upon and application where the City of London Corporation was the applicant. The Comptroller and City Solicitor added that Reg 10 of the General regs prohibited a Committee from determining any application if they were also responsible for the management of any land to which the application relates. In respect of today’s application, this included a significant amount of highway and, as the Planning and Transportation Committee are responsible for highways under their terms of reference, this required the establishment of a separate Sub-Committee without these same responsibilities to ensure that there was no conflict in terms of Members’ decision making to that end. Further consideration had also had to be given to how the Special Sub-Committee ought to be constituted and certain members of the Grand Committee had not been able to form part of the membership due to Regulation 64 which provides that, where a local authority is bringing forward a proposal it must make appropriate administrative arrangements to ensure that there was functional separation between the persons bringing forward the proposals and the persons responsible for determining them. Here, the application had been made by the City Corporation to itself as Local Planning Authority and, as such, arrangements had had to be put in place to address this. This had involved looking at what Committees were responsible for bringing forward this application with members of those Committees then identified as not being able to form a part of this Sub-Committee.

Apologies for absence were received from Peter Dunphy, Sophie Fernandes, Christopher Hill, Tracey Graham and William Upton.

The Town Clerk also announced that Graham Packham, originally listed as a member of this Sub-Committee, was now no longer eligible to form part of its membership having been appointed to the City of London Police Authority Board at the 15 April 2021 meeting of the Court of Common Council which had taken place after the publication of today’s papers.