This Week's Planning and Full Council

Planning Committee meeting tomorrow (Wednesday, 7pm) with Thanet/East Kent College and the Hotel Leslie plans up for consideration. Given the scale of the works planned for both, they should get a good going over. During the meeting we might get a mention of the possible effects of government changes to what are known as Permitted Development Rights, this aspect of planning regs appearing more frequently these days in deliberations. Its a short agenda but an interesting one nonetheless.

Full Council comes the next day with a couple of motions, the latter on Animal Welfare Inspections  has just emerged asking for Council to take advice to making inspections compulsory for exporters from the port, such advice setting TDC back a few grand. I'm not understanding this motion so I'm going to wait to hear whats behind this specific request.

The motion on recording Council meetings though is one I'm wondering about. The Council spends money on recording Full Council meetings, producing videos which are widely criticised for being of poor quality. Of course this motion came off the back of the Tony Flaig incident, which was resolved and had nothing to do with this motion and more to do with an overzealous Council staffer. Has any member of the public asked to record a meeting themselves?

Instead of dealing with the Council-produced recordings, the proposal is for the public to record it themselves. While its for the Chairman of the meeting to interpret whatever guidance appears, which may or may not fulfil the requirements of this motion, what will happen if the more twitchy Councillors object to equipment near them recording their private conversations with their neighbours? Yes, I do mean John Worrow...

(One thought to add and maybe a Councillor could help here, what's the public attendance for meetings not held in the Chamber? A lot of OSP sub-Groups, along with Governance and Audit typically hold meetings elsewhere. A member of the public with a camcorder in the Austen Room is likely to be pretty distracting even if it fulfils the motion.)

While its good that the Council is going out and seeking views on the Skate Park plans, surely logic would dictate going to consultation before deciding the sites? I understand the reasons behind that, of the shortness of time and the need to move speedily onto securing funding but its a bit odd to go to consultation on something which to a certain extent has already been decided by TDC.