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Determining Planning Applications & The Scheme of Delegation

West Oxfordshire District Council determines over 2000 planning applications per year. They are determined either by one of two Area Planning Sub-Committees (Uplands or Lowlands) or by the Strategic Director (Development) under powers delegated by the Council.

The delegated powers have been changed since they were first introduced, but have always been intended to allow quicker decisions to be made on the smaller and less contentious proposals and to enable the Sub-Committees to concentrate on the more significant and controversial developments.

The Government has placed great and increasing emphasis on the need for quick decisions and has promoted the extension of delegated powers so that only a small proportion of applications (about 10%) is referred to a committee.

The Delegation Scheme

The Council's current scheme for delegating the determination of applications contains a number of detailed provisions, but the main features are as follows.

The Strategic Director (Development) can generally determine applications except where:

A District Councillor asks, before the end of the consultation period, for the application to be referred to Committee.
The application is to be refused, unless the local District Councillor agrees that it should be refused.
The decision would be clearly contrary to the views of the town or parish council (except for householder applications to which this exclusion does not apply).
The decision would be contrary to the Local Plan or other adopted Council policy or guidance.
The proposal relates to property owned by the Council, a member of staff or a District Councillor.
Approval would be within one year of a dismissed appeal on the site.

The scheme also excludes the following types of development unless they are for approval of details following an outline planning permission or are for the resubmission of a scheme with an extant permission:

Housing developments of 10 or more units or on a site of over 0.5 hectares, unless the site is allocated for housing in the Local Plan.
Buildings of 1,000 square metres or more or on a site of a hectare or more.
Telecommunications masts. The scheme does not prevent the Strategic Director from taking an application to committee if he considers it appropriate.