Planning Committee

Brightlingsea Town Council is a ‘statutory consultee’ for any planning applications submitted to the local Planning Authorities Tendring District Council  and Essex County Council within the parish boundary or sometimes wider area (which may affect the town and/or residents).

Nearly all of the applications are from Tendring District Council but Essex County Council covers Minerals and Waste, new highways as well as Educational Establishments under their control. You can view the current applications and relevant documents on line here:

The Planning Committee is the only executive committee of the Council insofar as the comments made by the committee are sent off immediately to the respective authority.

Consequently, the minutes of the meeting are ‘noted’ at Full Council meetings rather than ‘approved’.

The committee can support, object or be neutral to the application as well as making comments. Prior to the committee meeting members of the committee can visit the application sites but are restricted to public viewpoints.

The committee endeavour to reach a consensus with their comments but this may not always be possible.

Members of the committee and generally substitute members of the committee have undergone planning training. The committee do not have any ‘veto’ on the applications but their comments are taken into account when the planning authorities make their decisions.

Useful documents include Application Types and Decision Making Criteria.

Nearly all of the applications at Tendring District Council are determined by officers. However, subject to the agreement of one of the District Councillors (who is also a BTC Councillor), the application can be ‘called in’. Consequently that application would go before the TDC Planning Committee with the relevant BTC/District Councillor speaking on that application.

The Council’s Planning Committee meets fortnightly to look and comment on applications and members of the public are welcome.

Generally it will also be possible to attend the meeting via Zoom. If it is known that a large number of members of the public are likely to attend, the Clerk in collaboration with the Chair may move the meeting to larger premises but this would be well publicised in advance.

If you wish to speak at a planning meeting…

Please notify the Clerk and inform her of the application you wish to speak on. You can of course object or support the application. With the agreement of the Chair it may be possible to bring forward the application on the agenda.

The Chair will usually allow you to speak for three minutes so it is a good idea to write down in advance what you are going to say.

Members of the Committee may ask you questions on what you have said.

Who makes up the committee?

The Committee is currently made up of the following Councillors:

• Cllr Chris Paveley (Chairman)
• Cllr Jayne Chapman (Vice Chairman)
• Cllr John Carr
• Cllr J Howard
• Cllr Ric Morgan

(If there are substitute members this will be announced at the start of the meeting under ‘Apologies’)

You can find the relevant agendas and minutes of the meetings held by the Planning Committee here:

The Planning Committee, besides commenting on planning applications, has a wider remit to discuss issues such as the Tendring Local Plan and new legislation such as the Environment Act. It produced the Environmental Policy for the Council that can be found here.