Exeter City Council is holding a public consultation on a “Liveable Exeter Placemaking Charter” which it hopes will “bring together everyone involved in shaping the future of the city”.
The charter repeatedly emphasises the transparency of the council’s approach, saying it aims to “create a culture of openness” and a “new community of practice” that will “foster open dialogue between stakeholders”.
However council communications around the consultation say the charter is focussed on only one of the five “core tools” from which it is constituted.
The council’s website consultation page, a council news story promoting the consultation and the dedicated website on which the consultation itself is being hosted all say the charter is focussed on the introduction of charges for pre-application planning advice.
None mention the developer’s forum at which landowners, developers, applicants and their agents will meet in private twice a year to discuss Exeter development delivery, or the “schedule of meetings, events and networking opportunities” that the council intends to create for them.
The council says the forum will “increase transparency in the planning application process” and “help build trust in the planning system and ensure that decisions are made in the community’s best interests”.
Nor do any mention the independent Design Review Panel process, the outputs from which constitute material considerations in planning decision-making, the use of Planning Performance Agreements to manage major developments, or the “key social, economic and environmental performance indicators” that will be used to measure development delivery outcomes despite all three also constituting major components of the new charter.
Design review – one of the charter’s five “core tools” – as part of the planning application process
The council is inviting comments on the Liveable Exeter Placemaking Charter via a dedicated website. However none of the six questions it asks invite feedback on anything other than the introduction of charges for pre-application advice – except the last five words of the final question.
This asks respondents if they have any comments about “other aspects of the charter” without explaining what they are.
The charter, which runs to fifteen pages in PDF form, is presented on just two pages on the consultation website, making its five-part structure much harder to grasp.
And much less pre-application advice charging information is provided on the consultation website than in the council executive committee report that recommended the consultation should be held.
Only six responses have been submitted via the consultation website in the nearly six weeks for which the consultation has run. Unsurprisingly, little enthusiasm for the prospect of pre-application advice charges, the standard rate for which will be “£3,550 plus extras”, is in evidence.
One respondent said: “This potentially just adds an other excuse to developers to not bothering to contact the council.” None of the responses submitted so far have addressed any other aspect of the new charter.
The public consultation on the Liveable Exeter Placemaking Charter ends on Sunday. Comments can be submitted online, by uploading PDFs or images or via email to consultations@exeter.gov.uk.
