Councillor Involvement. 6.7.1 Every Councillor will receive information at important stages throughout the process of preparing the Joint LDP, for example: discussions about the vision; the Joint LDP’s strategic aims and objectives; consideration of the preferred strategy, - which are important first steps; and latter on when discussions will take place regarding specific issues relating to sites and settlements. The Councillors will also have an important role because of their local knowledge as local ‘enablers’, to raise awareness within communities and therefore facilitate the process of preparing the Joint LDP. The Councillors’ input will be guided by the Members’ Code of Conduct and Standards Committee in order to prevent any influences on the Councillors’ role in making recommendations and decisions in the relevant committees.
Councillor Involvement. 9.1 The Council believes that Councillors should be appropriately and openly engaged with the development of the project, whilst ensuring that their decision making function is not compromised. Our normal procedure would be to request that the developer partakes in a presentation to the Development Consultation Forum. This will allow Councillors to develop an understanding of issues and raise their own issues and concerns that they wish to see addressed. Councillors are able to ask questions and raise issues but will not express views about the overall planning merits of any case and will not engage privately with the developer interest. Councillors need to adhere to the Code of Conduct for Councillors on planning matters and cannot predetermine their view on a scheme that may subsequently be the subject of a planning application. Applicants should not engage privately with Councillors.
