Agenda item

To consider the report regarding the Independent Report reviewing the Stansted Airport planning application.

Councillor Light raised a point of order. She said that the role of the Chair was to ensure that the Council meeting was a forum for the debate of matters of concern to the local community and a place where that Members who are not on the Executive are able to hold the Executive to account. She said that the Chair and the Chief Executive proposals to manage the meeting had limited the number of Members that could speak at this meeting, based on political proportionality and therefore curtailed the democratic rights of all Members to speak on this important debate. She said that all Members have the right to speak for their constitutional five minutes and that this was an unacceptable limit of Members rights.

Councillor Fairhurst said that he had not agreed with the proposals in relation to speakers and asked who had agreed with these arrangements.

The Chief Executive said that the rules of debate had not been amended and were owned by all Councillors.

Councillor Light said that the meeting was unconstitutional.

The Chair reminded Councillors about her request for respect when she took on the Chair.

Councillor Le Count presented the Stansted Airport Independent Review report. He thanked the independent expert, Members of the Task and Finish Group and the Monitoring Officer. He proposed the recommendation to receive and note the Independent Review report.

Councillor Gregory seconded the proposal. He reserved the right to speak.

Councillor Isham said that the Council`s defence strategy never had any intention to win the refusal decision at appeal. He said that condition 15 was conditional on approval, which the Inspector saw through immediately, as did the judge at the judicial review. Condition 15 was ultimately deemed unreasonable and resulted in full costs being awarded against the Council. He said that Uttlesford`s approach at the hearing was disastrous and, in legal terms, unreasonable. He said that responsibilities were not addressed within the report and that the administration needed to be held accountable. Instead, the report blamed the Planning Committee, which was not evidenced. He said that although the Chief Executive`s action plan appeared promising, if failures of process, professional responsibilities and oversight were not addressed, then there was no guarantee that the same would not happen again. He said that the action plan needed to follow in depth scrutiny of the full story. He asked that the action plan be revised to include addressing all the evidence, questions and statements raised at Scrutiny so that Members could be fully informed to then sign off the revised report.

Councillor Merifield thanked all those who had worked to bring the review before Members. She reminded Members that the motion in 2019 to refer the application back to the Planning Committee was truly cross party and received only one vote against and one abstention. She said that it was a privilege to Chair the Planning Committee, and whilst there were disagreements, Members were united in working in the best interests of residents and communities.

The cross party decision that Planning Committee made in January 2020 regarding the Airport application was complex. However, regardless of party membership the decision was made by Committee collectively, within the constraints as they were understood.

Councillor Smith asked why the Council had decided to overturn the decision of 2019. He said that Leadership was about taking decisions that might not be liked, but were in the best interests of the district. He said that the application was inline with national policy and should have been approved. In response to comments regarding the 2019 decision, he said that the use of the casting vote by the Chair was part of the legitimate democratic process and should not be undermined.

Councillor Emanuel said that it was an excellent decision to engage an independent, highly qualified external resource to conduct the review and highlighted the Council’s commitment to transparency and openness. She said that an application relating to nationally significant infrastructure should have been undertaken by the Government, as had been the case of airport expansions at Heathrow, Gatwick and Leeds-Bradford. She said that until the announcement of “Jet Zero’ this week there had been no update to government planning policy on aviation and climate change since Net Zero became law in the UK. The Jet Zero policy was already subject to criticism for being unrealistic and over-reliant on unproven technology and Net Zero policy itself was deemed unlawful this week and failed to meet the Climate Change Act obligations. She said that the weight accorded to climate change ultimately tipped the balance against the Council, but morally she thought that the Council behaved with integrity and it should be acknowledged that the Council tried to protect residents from harm and were right to do so. She said it was invidious and inappropriate to attempt to single out individuals for blame for democratic decisions that have been made. The Council had a collective responsibility for their actions and while scrutiny was absolutely within their remit, scapegoating was not. 

Councillor Khan said that the dissenting document fully covered why the partial report should be sent back for further work. He said that the Nolan principles ensure that those in public office were held accountable for their decisions. He said that although some of the officers responsible for the failed management of the defence were no longer with the Council, the lead Member and the then Leader of the Council remained in office and were responsible for liaising with officers on a regular basis. He said that they were accountable, bore responsibility for the process and invited the lead Member for Planning to offer his resignation.

Councillor Pepper said that Climate Change was real and was happening now, as evidenced by unprecedented temperatures in the UK. She said that there was undeniable scientific evidence that climate change was causing more harm than previously anticipated. In January 2020 the Council made a bold, democratic cross party decision to challenge the airport expansion. She said that whoever had represented the Council, the result would not have been different, regardless of evidence or the carbon commitments enshrined in law.

She said that local government deserved more power to make decisions based on what residents truly need.

Councillor Lemon said that most of what he was going to say had already been raised by Councillors Khan and Isham. He said that he had always fought against the airport but having listened to Members he felt that the Council had let the community down.

Councillor Freeman said that this was an opportunity to learn from the past.

He said that Officers were custodians of the democratic process and needed to be listened to. He said that planning law was legislated by central government and was complex, but it remained the only planning tool the Council had to control development. He commended the report.

Councillor Dean said that he feared that the Council`s political leaders were trying to scapegoat their own Planning Committee, and that the independent report blamed the Committee for acting politically, which was incorrect.

He said that he had provided a report of his reaction to the report to Scrutiny and an updated version to Members of Council. His report had said that the independent report was incomplete and undermined the democratic standards of the Council. He urged Members to not accept the report and finish the job properly.

Councillor Evans said that the consistent advice that he had received from the then Chief Executive, Director of Public Services and Monitoring Officer was that he had no role in the Stansted Airport planning appeal, and that the conduct    and management of the appeal were entirely delegated to Officers, as per the Constitution. He rejected Councillor Khan`s invitation to stand down as there was no lack of diligence. He welcomed the reports and thanked those who had contributed to the work of the Scrutiny Task and Finish Group.

Councillor Gregory said that the report was incomplete, but highlighted a series of failures in process and substance. He said that much could not be determined as evidence did not exist, such as the 43 meetings with the airport that took place in 8 months, of which only 2 were minuted. He said that there had been a failure to comply with the Constitution or accepted good practices.

He said that Council`s instructions to Scrutiny had been crystal clear, as were Scrutiny`s terms of reference and those of the Task and Finish Group. The review had been delivered and the entirety of the independent report was in the public domain. He said that the Chief Executive and Monitoring Officer had done a huge amount of work to achieve maximum transparency in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. He said that the Council had failed residents, but this was the basis for improvement and the Chief Executive had already started to address these failings. He asked Members to receive the report and focus on improvements.

Councillor Hargreaves requested a recorded vote.

The result was declared with 19 votes for, 6 against and 3 abstentions.

RESOLVED: to receive and note the independent expert review report into the handling of the Stansted airport expansion planning application.