 yw'r rhonderdd i'r hyn o'r ddylch yn dweud, ac ydych chi'n gweithio'r ffaith yn y ddechrau? Mae'n mynd i'n ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. Yn y ddweud, mi'n bys arnynt i'r ddweud yw'r cyfnodd, felly mae'n gweithio'r gweld, yn ôl i'r ddweud yr un o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. 5 ddoch, 9 yw 8, 7. Rwy'n credu'r berthynas diwethaf, maen nhw'n meddwl ar y cymdeithas Cymru. Mae'n rhoi'r ysgwyddor, ond hynny'n hynny'n meddwl ar gyfer. Rwy'n reall, ddoddol Rhun ap drwy gyffrifio'r gweithio, ond y byddai'r cyrragedd ar meddwl yma. Cymdeithio'r Llywyddau nesaf, maen nhw'n meddwl i arddangos y saeth wedi'r wneud y gwleidydd a atri chwyn yma mor cyflymu yma yn dwybr am gweithio yn y gwirionedd a'i rywbeth. as we are on video, as the camera follows the microphone being switched on so councillors and officers are requested to wait a few seconds before speaking to allow the camera to catch up with you. And those participating the meeting via the live stream, could you indicate that you wish to speak via the chat column and please do not use the chat column for any other purposes than requesting to speak. Please make sure your device is fully charged and that you switch your microphone off unless invited to do so otherwise. Please ensure that you switched off or silenced any other devices that you have so they do not interrupt the proceedings. And as requested yesterday by email please use a headset if available when speaking and hold the microphone close to your mouth. When you're invited to address the meeting please make sure your microphone is switched on. When you finish addressing the meeting please turn your microphone off immediately. Speak slowly, clearly and please do not talk over or interrupt anybody else. Members please note if we need to vote on any item we should do so via the electronic system on the microphones. I believe everyone's well versed with this but I'll run through the process again if and when we come to it. So now committee members in the chamber I'll now invite each of you to introduce yourselves. Members after I call your name could you please switch on your microphone, wait a few seconds and then introduce yourselves. So as I mentioned earlier my name is councillor Henry Bachelor I'm one of the members for Linton and I'm sitting in the chair today and could I ask vice chair councillor Peter Fane to introduce myself. Peter Fane Shelford. Thank you and I believe virtually we have councillor Martin Kahn. Martin if you could switch on your video and microphone and introduce yourself please. Hello I'm councillor Martin Kahn and member fist in Empington and Orchard Park. Thank you very much and just for clarity as you aren't in the chamber you won't be able to vote on any item we are able to take part in debate. Councillor Claire Daunton please. Yes good morning everyone I'm Claire Daunton and I'm one of the members for the Fenditon and Full Born Ward. Thank you very much councillor Jeff Harvey. Yes thank you chair good morning yes Jeff Harvey I'm the member for abortion ward. Thank you councillor Dr Tumi Hawkins. Good morning everyone thank you chair Tumi Hawkins and I am the member for Caldicott Ward. Thank you. Thank you councillor Judith Ripth. Good morning everyone I represent Milton and Water Beach Ward. Thank you very much councillor Deborah Roberts. Good morning chairman good morning everybody I'm Deborah Roberts and I'm in the district councillor Foxton Ward. Thank you. Thank you councillor Sue Ellingson. Good morning I'm councillor Sue Ellingson, Swayf Sue Ward standing in for Heather Williams. Thank you very much councillor Dr Richard Williams. Thank you very much chair I'm Richard Williams I'm the member for Wittlesford Treplo Heathfield and Newton. Thank you very much and finally councillor Eileen Wilson. Thank you chair councillor Eileen Wilson and member for Cotton Ward. Thank you very much so I can confirm we have enough to make the meeting core eight so we will continue and also at the top table with with myself and the vice chair we have two officers who will be supporting the committee today. We have Mr Chris Carter if you'd like to introduce yourself. Thank you chair morning everybody Chris Carter delivery manager for strategic site supporting the committee today thank you. Thank you very much and Mr Stephen Reed if you could introduce yourself please with the microphone. Other button. Good morning chair and members. Thank you and Stephen Reed is our senior planning lawyer and he'll be advising the committee on any legal issues we may have and I think virtually we also have Mr Ian senior who will be clerking the meeting today Ian if you're there could you switch on video and mic and say hello. Yes hello everybody. Thank you very much. Members if at any time the member leaves the meeting would they please make that fact known so it can be recorded in the minutes. As you've seen we have probably one of the as you see we have probably one of the largest genders I think can everyone mute their mics please if they're online. Sorry this vice chair doing me doing me over there. So as I was saying we have one of the largest genders I think I've ever had at this council today albeit we have one two three four items for decision today members so I'm it's impossible to say how long the meeting will take but I'll do my best to keep it moving and also we'll be taking regular breaks we'll try and have a 15 minute break before lunch a lunch break and then if needed another 15 minute break in the afternoon so but it will depend on where we are in the agenda or within an item at that point but we'll play it by ear as it were. Okay so with all the housekeeping rules out the way we will now move on to item two on the agenda which is apologies Mr senior. Okay apologies from councillor Pippa Halings and councillor Heather Williams and their substitutes are councillor dr Clare Daunton and councillor Sue Eilton. Thank you very much. We're going to move on to item three which are declarations of interest so members are there any interests that you need to declare relating to items on the agenda today if you could indicate. I don't see any as mentioned at the beginning I have two this relating to item six and seven which are both applications in Linton regarding the land north and south of Bartlow roads. I have a pecuniary interest as my employer has an ongoing business relationship with the applicant so as I have done with previous applications on this site I will have to recuse myself and take no part in the debate or the vote at which point councillor fame will take the chair for those two items. Okay if there are no more declarations of interest we'll move on to item four the minutes of the previous meeting which are held on the 27th of July and begin on page one of our agenda's members are there any alterations or amendments that we need to make here please indicate if so I'm not seeing any hands so oh sorry councillor Harvey mike friend please um to page one I was a bit confused by the final paragraph so to the notes of the meeting on 14th of August 21 or be presented to the committee on on on the second oh yeah of the 11th of August at a time traveling going on there um I wasn't sure Ian can you throw any light on to that which which is the wrong date there so we're looking at page one for a minutes of previous meeting it says the minutes of the meeting held on the 14th will be presented at the meeting at the 11th which is obviously impossible yes that that's a typo chair at 14th of July okay I was thinking in terms of August because I think I was writing them in August and there's also another place it may be on the same page where there seems to be an empty paragraph B yes that's that's an additional and carry return that's been put in there is no B and C should be B if that makes sense understood thank you very much all right okay thank you so full marks to councillor Harvey for spotting that councillor Roberts thank you chairman I think I am at page one the meeting of the 27th of July I think I was there can that be double checked or if it what if I wasn't there my apologies apologies weren't made yeah I think that was it chairman I think I did actually apologise um but it's not been noted uh are we looking at number number two on page one of the minutes councillors Judith Ripiff and Deborah Roberts sent apologies for absence thank you chairman great thank you very much agreed well we'll let you off councillor um any other members any other comments on the minutes no so with those amendments can we all agree that we sign these as the correct records agreed thank you very much so then we move on to the substantive business we have today and item five we have application 20 slash zero five one zero one slash fu well which is long stansen land at the retreat fuse lane this is on page seven of our agendas um the application is for erection of a bungalow with garage and associated infrastructure um obviously this is a we're not actually deciding this application today we're just deciding the council's position as this application has been taken to appeal for non-determination so just to make that abundantly clear at the start and I'm sure the officers will clarify that as well we're here to resolve the council's position at the appeal as obviously we haven't made a position yet given there was no decision made on the application um the applicant is mr gerry could do of lambrick homes we have five material considerations which are in the agenda uh the decision was due by the fifth of the second and the presenting officer is mr lewis tomlinson who i'm hoping is on the line and can introduce the item for us thank you chair i'll just share my screen could someone just confirm they can see that please we can great thank you for the site is land at the retreat fuse lane on stanton and it's land to the rear of the retreat just here as outlined by the red line fuse lane comprises a single vehicular width gravel service track the lane currently serves an access to a double garage 735 high street and three other dwellings the willows and two other recently constructed dwellings to the western retreat so you've got the willows here and two further dwellings here his aerial view so again you can see the willows is here and then two recently constructed dwellings um the lane varies in width and the lane runs alongside a tree line the vegetated area to the north with boundaries to a number 135 and to the willows to the south side a footpath a public right away linking the home farm residential development to the south and west of fuse lane with the high street merged onto the south side of fuse lane at a point to the immediate west of the willows site lies within the village framework to the immediate north of the site is a drainage ditch along here um which outfalls lon stanton brook the site is otherwise unconstrained just runs through some photos these may seem familiar because they were also shown on the recent section saying to free on the adjacent site so this is a few up fuse lane from access off the high street 135 high street is on your left the site in question is further down here is a few along the high street past the frontage of fuse lane so access fuse lane is here this is looking north and you can note the traffic common measures just here again this is a few along high street past frontage of fuse lanes fuse lanes here this is looking south or fuse lane on the right this is a few along high street past the frontage of fuse lane looking further south taken from the entrance to mitchcroff roads again you can see traffic measure traffic common measures just here this is the fuse lane entrance looking towards the north fuse lane entrance looking towards the south this is looking down fuse lane we've garaged to 135 high street and the willows on the left just here and the site question is down here on the right looking down fuse lane again with the retreat on the right so that's the retreat speed demolished and replaced with two dwellings here the site we're looking at today is behind the retreat you can see in the foreground as well so in the backgrounds you've got two recently constructed dwellings that's the informal turning head opposite the retreat that's the access onto fuse lane from the public right away to home farm so this is just the existing site plan and the proposed site plan so the application seeks consent for the erection of a chalet bungalow with the garage and associated infrastructure it would contain four bedrooms the application sets out that a proposed dwelling would mirror the recently constructed dwelling to the west known as the elms with the same roof pitch and ridge height so this is this dwelling here the elms as you can see of a very similar design scale and height it would have a similar it would have a smaller footprint than the approved bungalow on the site and yet still provides four usable bedrooms given an increase in garden size to propose dwelling would exceed internal floor space policy requirement and will provide parking within the kerterlidge of the site and the ability to turn and leave dwelling in forward gear so just for some context so as previously mentioned these are the two recently constructed dwellings this is where the retreat is currently and there's two permissions on the site one for application to demolish the retreat and replace it with two dwellings and the subsequent section is saying it's free application that recently came to committee the site that we're looking at today is this area to the rear there's two live permissions on here one allowed at appeal and one approved by the council so the applicant has submitted an appeal to the planning inspectorate on the grounds of non-determination as a result the local planning authority no longer has the authority to determine the application the local planning authority is required however to prepare a statement of case as part of the appeals process this would set out its evaluation of the planning merits of the proposal given the history of the site the application would have been referred to the planning committee for its determination had the appeal against non-determination not being made officers are therefore bringing the application to planning committee in order that members can express to committees minded to decision that will form part of the statement of case the council secured an extension till Friday this week to submit its statement of case to allow members to consider this application today at committee I'll just run through the proposed plans so that's just a zoomed in version of the proposed site plan as you can see you've got parking within the site a turn in area a garden here and again you can see a very similar design to the dwelling to the west proposed elevations so as you can see a shallow bungalow accommodation in the wreath in the in the form of dormers so two front dormers and one rear dormer also note there's no first floor windows on the side elevations so this is the proposed ground and first floor plan so there's a number of updates members would have received an update reports officers would like to point members towards that because it contains additional representations from fuselain consortium and members should also note that long standing parish council has changed their position from support to objects members will also be aware of a complaint letter from long standing parish council that related to the recent section 73 application which was for land to the front of the site the response from Stephen Kelly to long standing parish council is available on the website further representations have been received from fuselain consortium since the update report was published and these are also available on the website these representations include correspondence between fuselain consortium and the local highway authority which fuselain consortium have requested the local highway authority to explain or clarify the scope with highway safety assessment officers have received and uploaded additional correspondence from the camshire county solicitor to fuselain consortium producing a holding response at lunchtime yesterday officers were forwarded a highway's engineer report by crates consulting engineering on behalf of fuselain consortium which includes at any further development of fuselain should not be permitted due significant concerns relating to visibility and the site's existing access arrangements the local highway authority late yesterday afternoon provide a response to crates assessment the response from the like local highway authority concludes that there's no substantive highway reasons to recommend that development be refused all of this is available on the website i believe members have received emails with this information we have received a large number of emails this morning raising concern about the potential for removal and cutting back of hedges to enable inter-vehicle visibility displays and the lack of consultation about this dr John Finney from the local highway authority will be available and committed today to answer any questions regarding the local highway authority's response to the application and to crates highway assessment so officers have considered all other representations made by fuselain consortium and third parties over the course of the application officers do not consider any of those representations altered a recommendation all the primary reasons for reaching this recommendation officers recommend that the planning committee determines they will be minded to approve the application if it had the authority to do so subject to the following conditions and informative set out in the officer report thank you chair thank you very much Lewis and members will have an opportunity to ask questions of clarity of the officer but during the debate part of the of this item rather than at this current time so thank you again for that presentation Lewis I'm sure we'll be coming back to you at some point members will now move on to the councillor Roberts matter of clarification please um probably to Mr Carter and Mr Reed obviously in the cutting down of a forest to provide all this I can't find anything on it and seeing that we are not actually making the decision on the application but actually what our stance would be legal wise can it be explained to me have I missed somewhere in all this documentation any legal advice that the district council have attained from outside council because even though it's telling me the world and its mother about all these past cases in the High Court some things which are absolutely not pertinent to what's going on today I can't see any information that leads me to understand what the position has been given to us where we stand by council you know we will have taken council's advice and that I have no doubt whatsoever but where is it probably best if our legal officer can give us an update on that one if you may Steven thank you chair um as has been explained by Mr Tomlinson um we do not have jurisdiction to determine this application you are simply being invited to comment on what you would have determined had it been within your jurisdiction in those circumstances so do you do not believe that it's appropriate or relevant to raise questions of council I'm sorry I don't think it's for officers to tell members who are the decision makers what is relevant or relevant not relevant to us to actually have our disposal to understand and then there's Mr Reid has just confirmed and clarified this is not a planning application anymore this is about legal situations and there is in my opinion absolutely no way that we can decide today to have a set position to argue legally if we have not or if it can be argued by those in opposition to to it all that we have not actually or the officers have not actually briefed their members properly if this was in Westminster and the bureaucrats haven't briefed ministers there would be hell on earth and I would like to know I've been asked to stand my case up um in a court of law basically and I do not know what this council's legal advice has been reference its position okay I think just absolute clarity it might be worth a firm legal opinion on that please chair if I may this committee does not have jurisdiction to determine this application that's the legal advice okay members that's the legal advice we have we've been members we uh thank you chair just of it's helpful it is true to say that whatever decision we make today is is not going to determine the planning application that now rests with the planning inspectorate I think what we would like the committee to be able to do is to resolve what its position would be at that appeal so that we can put the best case for the council based on all the information that we have available and clearly there's a lot of information available including the late representation summarised by Lewis Tomlinson um so I think that's that's the position I concur with Stephen Reed that this council isn't determining the planning application that is a matter for the planning inspectorate now but what we want to be able to do is to put forward the council's position so so officers are basically refusing to give me a member the information that I require to make a very serious decision um on what is going to be a legal case fighting I find that intolerable and absolutely unacceptable you are not in charge though I think often you think you are but actually it's members who are the decision makers chair if I may please I'm sorry to repeat myself um members are not making a decision today and therefore officers are not withholding information that is material to any decision being made today okay let me just put this on record now I will now be requesting through the proper process and I know it will be privileged information however you will be getting a request from me that I want to be sent and or receive all the legal advice that this council has received from outside sources on its position okay thank you that is obviously your right to do that and that's up to officers to send that over but we've had legal advice we can continue today um I haven't heard any motions for for defer also I'm proceeding with this application um we'll then move on to public speakers please and I think the first one we have is from Mr Daniel Fulton I believe is with us today in the chamber Mr Fulton yes thank you I understand Dr Finney is here um I'm not going to speak first until officers have presented their case um you have to follow your own procedures so I will wait here for Dr Finney to make his arguments yeah mr Fulton Dr Finney is here to answer questions not to put any case forward I'm afraid this is your opportunity to put your case forward for objection I would respectfully invite the chair to ask members if they have any questions for Dr Finney in regards to the removal of trees in Long Stanton and if the chair would be willing to put that question to members of the committee and if members have no questions I would then be happy to proceed no the process is you proceed first and if members have any questions for officers during the debate that is their opportunity to ask if you want to put your case forward now this is your opportunity so chair I'm sorry but I think there is a point here that you know in four hours yesterday afternoon we we got um this apparent decision from the highways authority saying they wanted to cut the the trees back it asserts their substantial overgrowth on the highway I very much doubt a site visit was carried out in four hours and that's very important actually to um this um application so I think we do need to hear something about that from somebody if not officers from mr Finney but that is quite crucial okay my my view would be that we hear from public speakers first and then we hear from technical advisors but if you bear with me I will just ask officers opinion okay so I'm going to proceed as we usually do where we take public speakers first and then we can ask any questions of technical officers who are joining us to support the committee during the debate so i'm sorry and this is turning into a very messy morning already and I'm very sorry to be feeling it so angry so early in the day however it's quite clear that very important information has suddenly appeared in the public domain and in members domain um which gives a completely different perspective as about the access visibility on the lane and how come um it has suddenly um come forward in this manner I mean I think the members of the public would could be forgiven to saying um it looks underhand um and you know the members of the public seemingly generally in long stand and don't know about this or haven't had an opportunity themselves to make any representation and here again we're not we're not having the advice we're not getting and and you know senior members of this committee don't seem willing to give us that advice when we are going to be expected to have input into what our case is going to be and how it can stand up now you know it's always the case that we try and get the information in before we start to um decide about it and also I think in all fairness to long stand and residents you know large and small and the whole lot of them are just a few of them I think it's important that they have an opportunity to listen this morning to what the county council's stance is now and why this sudden change and this cutting down of large areas of hedgerows because that may actually um make a difference to say Mr Fulton's representation to us you know this is not open and transparent government and you know we are supposed to listen to our residents and I think it's our residents right to know the full story before we then start debating it properly including um the Fuselain consortium you know all too often over the last few years I think that Fuselain and long standing residents have been treated very badly thank you councillor councillor Hawkins used to contribute thank you chair I think I don't know why there's a fuss being made this way because we are following normal process that we normally follow we have always can I please finish I didn't interrupt your tirade now we have always followed a process and that process is we have the case officer present the case to us we then have public speakers come forward and say what they need to say to us we then ask them questions of clarification and then we go into the debate at which point any and all the third party officers who are party to the application we call on them to give us their information and their reasoning we get all the time we do get updates at the last minute and none of that time have we had this debate on take it now take it not we need to follow a process we have a process let's follow that process please we were told very categorically by the chairman that mr fiddy is here is present to answer our questions why why don't you want mr fiddy to be able to answer right time at the right time in the process but this is a lot of robots at the right time we just stop we take a step back please for a second please we have a process for hearing applications the case officer presents the case we hear from public speakers and then officers support the committee with their advice during the debate i'm not proposing to deviate from that at all and i would like to carry on this process please so i'm going to invite mr fiddy again if he would like to put his objections forward thank you just to add a constructive potentially constructive suggestion could i move that we do slightly depart from our normal procedure and we go back to the old procedure for this where we have questions of clarification to the officer now and the reasoning for that is that this is a different sort of application because yesterday we were given some very important information in the afternoon it wasn't in the officer's report we haven't had time to read it um thoroughly and this is therefore an unusual application and therefore i think would merit an unusual procedure just for this one application so i would move that motion i don't know if anybody wishes to second it it's a motion to move so okay so we have a motion thank you so we have a motion moved to allow questions of clarity of case officers at this stage from councillor Richard Williams we've just been seconded by Deborah Roberts uh do we need any debate on this particular item i know we've heard one opinion from councillor Hawkins does anyone else wish to add to this debate we do not so we have to go to a vote on this please uh Aaron are you able to set this up on the keypads the members voting you need to press the blue button to register and then if you're in favour yes you press green if you're not you press red or if you wish to abstain you press yellow so we're voting on the motion to revert back to the previous process whereby we can ask questions of clarity of officers at this stage rather than during the debate so if you're in agreement you vote green but yes if you're not okay we'll just it looks as if the the voting has reset so members apologies if we could go through the voting process again so blue button to register green if we're in favour of reverting to the previous previous way of working or red if we do not and obviously yellow if you wish to abstain so okay everyone for final clarity we're voting on whether to revert back to the old process of being able to ask officers questions of clarity at this stage rather than during the debate if you're in favour of reverting you press green if not you press red or if you wish to abstain you press yellow okay so i believe we have all the votes in and we have three in favour seven against so that motion has fallen thank you very much Aaron you can take that off our screens so we'll proceed as originally intended and we'll go back again to Mr Fulton please if you would like to give your three minutes worth of objections yes thank you chair i'll start out by making reference to the statement of community involvement which was adopted by this council in 2019 and which is legally binding in law on this council part four of the statement of community involvement requires that representations made on planning applications are considered by the decision makers before the decision is made it also requires that representations are published in the application file on the council's website it's highly unusual to see a a major change from a proposal such as the local highway authority proposing cutting down to 43 by 2.4 meter triangles on each the north and south side of high street of the fuselain in high street just today this morning i believe over 12 representations have been received keep in mind this information from the local highway authority only came out yesterday evening of the representations received today they include the campaign for the protection of rural england living streets cambridge the chair of the federation of cambridge residents associations they include multiple residents of fuselain multiple residents of mitchcroft road head and house in long stanton high street in long stanton and another of other individuals from other places in the community have any members of the committee seen these representations which were legally obliged to take into account unless the council's position is that the statement of community involvement no longer applies because this is an appeal if you're not willing to listen to local residents on illegal technicality i don't even know what i'm doing here i mean to test your call quality record a short message after the beep then your message will be played back to you members by way of an update still ongoing issues with the live stream but the engineer is confident we can get going by at least half sorry by the latest half 11 so i'm going into the final 15 minute adjournment till half 11 if the issues aren't resolved by then we'll have to abandon the meeting but engineers are confident we should be able to get up and running so yep by way of an update so we are still in adjournment thank you members can we take our seats thank you very much so members unfortunately we're at half 11 now in the