Statement of Community Involvement Draft March 2023

I wish to submit the following comments for your consideration:
1. A broken link in para. 2.6: The link for the Council's Notification Register does not appear to open a page into which a member of the public, a group or a business can enter their contact details and their preferences for being notified by the Council of planning applications and consultations.

2. Community groups: The draft text mentions various kinds of groups including those with protected characteristics (para. 2.4), community groups and organisations that are local (presumably to the site to which an application refers; please clarify para. 2.2 in that regard) and specific community groups (para. 3.2). In the context of land use planning, this could be understood to refer solely to communities of place, to the exclusion of communities of interest in particular topics (such as ecological sustainability, biodiversity and mitigation of climate change). Such a reading can disadvantage the latter, which for lack of notification may fail to engage with a planning process in its earliest stages when fundamental issues might need to be addressed. Rather than burden the officers with further notification, such groups could be invited to express their scope of interests via the Notification Register mentioned in point 1. above.

3. Document formatting: The text of each draft document that is subject to or otherwise referenced in any public consultation should be both searchable and copiable; including documents from other parties such as applicants and consultants. (para. 4.3) For instance, the contents of the present 'Statement of Community Involvement - Draft March 2023' are searchable yet not (so it seems) copiable for the purpose of citing extracts.

4. Submitting comments: In para. 3.1, the proviso that comments will not be considered unless they are "... copied to the Strategic Planning team within the consultation period ..." seems unreasonable, since this officer team is not widely known outside of the Council. Rather, a set of comments should be considered if they are duly received by the Council within the prescribed period. Even if they arrived on the following working day, no officer time would have been lost in accepting delivery; similarly if an emailed response were to turn up in the Council's incoming 'Spam' folder.
Oddly in the present consultation, even after logging in as advised here, the destination page does not seem to provide a form for submitting comments! 🧐