Agenda and minutes

County Councillors J Eaton and J Rear replaced County Councillors J Marsh and P Rigby on the Committee respectively.

None received.

Members are asked to consider any Pecuniary and Non-Pecuniary Interests they may have to disclose to the meeting in relation to matters under consideration on the Agenda.

County Councillor P Hayhurst declared a non pecuniary interest in agenda item 4 as a member of Fylde Borough Council, as the County Councillor for the area concerned and as a member of Elswick Parish Council and Elswick Community Project both of which had received grants from the applicant.

The Committee are asked to agree that the Minutes of the last meeting held on 13 December 2017 be confirmed and signed by the Chair.

A revised set of Minutes was circulated at the meeting. Members were informed that the title to item 6 had been transposed onto Item 4 and that this had now been rectified.

Resolved: That the Minutes of the meeting held on 13 December 2017, be confirmed and signed by the Chair of the Committee.

A report was presented on the amended vehicle routing and highway mitigation measures in respect of an application for the construction and operation of a site for drilling of up to four exploratory wells including hydraulic fracturing, testing and site restoration on land at Roseacre Wood, Roseacre Road near Elswick.

The Committee visited the site on the 17th and 22^nd January 2018.

The purpose of the report was to assess the applicant's amended vehicle routing and highway mitigation measures and to consider the extent to which the revised proposals addressed the County Council's previous objections. It was reported that the conclusions of the Committee would be presented as evidence to the reopened public inquiry on 10 April 2018.

The report included the views of Highways England, Lancashire County Council's Highways, Treales, Roseacre and Wharles Parish Council, Kirkham Town Council, Inskip with Sowerby Parish Council, Elswick Parish Council, Greenhalgh with Thistleton Parish Council, Friends of the Earth, The Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, Mark Menzies MP, Ben Wallace MP and details of 349 letters of representation received together with 199 copies of a cyclostyle letter organised by Friends of the Earth.

Prior to considering the Council's response on the revised proposals, the meeting was adjourned for 5 minutes to allow the Committee time to consider additional formal representations. These included a letter from the Chief Constable dated 24 January 2018 and the 'Update Sheet' which included the views of Fylde Borough Council, Medlar with Wesham Town Council, Newton with Clifton Parish Council, County Councillor Matthew Salter (Member for Wyre Rural Central) and details of a further 49 letters of representation received together with another 169 copies of the cyclostyle letter (copy set out at Annex A and Annex B to the Minute Book respectively).

The Development Management Officer presented a PowerPoint presentation showing a site location plan, the original access proposals (Blue route) and the revised access proposals. The Committee was also shown photographs of Dagger Road (Blue Route), Elswick Village (red and green route), Roseacre Road, Elswick (green route), Roseacre Village (Green route), Inskip Village (Red route) and an aerial photograph of the A585/B5259 Junction (red and green routes).

Several speakers including representatives from the Parish Councils of Newton with Clifton, Inskip with Sowerby, Elswick, Greenhalgh with Thistleton and Treales, Wharles & Roseacre addressed the Committee. The Chair of Roseacre Awareness Group and County Councillor Liz Oades also addressed the Committee.

The speakers reiterated the concerns set out in the committee report with regard to the narrow roads, the lack of footpaths in many areas and the safety concerns for other road users including school children, pedestrians, cyclists, horses, agricultural vehicles and other vulnerable road users. They felt that therevised transport routing strategy was unsound and unsafe and would result in an increase in large HGVs on poorly maintained unclassified roads with limited width and many bends and poor visibility.

The representatives also raised the following summarised concerns:

·  There would be a  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

A report was presented on an application for an extension to the car park at Astley Park School, Harrington Road, Chorley.

The report included the views of Chorley Borough Council, LCC Highways Development Control, Sport England, the Coal Authority and details of four letters of representation received.

The Development Management Officer presented a PowerPoint presentation showing an aerial photograph of the site and the nearest residential properties. The Committee was also shown photographs of the existing car park, the proposed car park extension and vehicles parked on surrounding residential roads.

A local resident addressed the committee and objected to the proposed extension for the following summarised reasons:

·  Vehicles waiting to access and exit the car park on the narrow, single track, access road cause a 'bottle neck' effect which impacts on residents.

·  The loss of playing fields would have an adverse impact on the school children.

·  The car park would have a detrimental impact on the character of the area and would result in overall disruption to residential amenity due to loss of view and impacts from car headlights.

·  There is no need for the extension – there are pay and display car parks available within a 4 minute walk.

The Committee was advised that a petition had been signed by eleven households objecting to the proposals; that two local borough councillors had raised objections to the proposed development and that Sir Lindsay Hoyle MP had also been consulted.

The School Manager of Astley Park School addressed the committee and spoke in support of the application. She explained that the need for the extra parking spaces was derived from rising pupil numbers and staff at the school. The school caters for children with learning, behavioural, social and emotional difficulties which results in higher parking demands than other schools due to the additional staffing required to support these children. Also due to the specialist nature of the school, pupils come from a wide catchment area and therefore there is particularly high demand for parking, particularly during peak drop off and pick up times. 

Due to the demand for further parking spaces and to reduce issues of parking on adjacent public roads and to encourage volunteers, the school had been allowing the temporary parking of vehicles on unallocated areas within the school grounds including on part of the application site.  The application proposes to formalise the use of the area as a properly constructed car parking area. It was hoped that this would help mitigate some of the impacts on residents in terms of on street parking and congestion. The school would ensure that all cars reversed into the new car parking spaces thereby minimising the impact on residents. With regard to loss of playing field, the committee was advised that the school had 6.3 acres of playing fields and that 1.5 acres was proposed to be taken up by the car park extension. There would also be less likelihood of congestion on the access road should the car park extension be  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

It was reported that since the last meeting of the committee on 13 December 2017, six planning applications had been granted planning permission by the Head of Service Planning and Environment in accordance with the County Council's Scheme of Delegation.

Resolved: That the report be noted

An item of urgent business may only be considered under this heading where, by reason of special circumstances to be recorded in the Minutes, the Chairman of the meeting is of the opinion that the item should be considered at the meeting as a matter of urgency.  Wherever possible, the Chief Executive should be given advance warning of any Member’s intention to raise a matter under this heading.

There were no items of urgent business.

The next meeting of the Development Control Committee will be held on Wednesday 7 March 2018 at 10.00 a.m. in Committee Room B - the Diamond Jubilee Room, County Hall, Preston.

Resolved: That the next meeting of the Committee be held on Wednesday 7 March 2018.