New clause 51 - Chief planning officer
Planning and Compulsory Purchase (Re-committed) Bill
10:15 am
Mr Matthew Green (Ludlow, Liberal Democrat)
I offer general support, although I am worried by the general implications of doing so. I hope that my comments will help the situation, rather than create a dogmatic position. I have great sympathy for the idea of ensuring that there is no decline in the status of planning departments. However, I am concerned about the financial effect on authorities of making it a statutory requirement to have a chief planning officer. I know, for example, that the Government are publishing a children's Green Paper, which means that there will have to be a director for children's services.
The trend is to keep telling councils that they must have one of these and one of those. The danger is that a council's ability to manage its staffing arrangements, especially at the highest paid levels, becomes very difficult. Each of the five borough and district councils in Shropshire, for example, has a different system. Some have a director of planning, while others have a head of development control who works for a director of operational services, because they have needed to group several areas together for financial reasons. My concern is that this may force some councils into having a director of planning again. A few years ago, South Shropshire had to take that step for financial reasons.