Please make sure you have read through the guidance below before submitting your question.
A question can also be posted to: the Committee Services Manager, Council Offices, PO Box 9, Cecil Street, Margate, Kent CT10 1XZ
Members of the press and residents of Thanet can ask questions at ordinary meetings of Council; the exceptions being the annual council meeting, the annual budget-setting meeting (usually at the beginning of February) and extraordinary meetings.
A question must be submitted by the person who will ask the question at the Council meeting and not someone else on the questioner’s behalf. You can submit a question by clicking on the date of the meeting in the table below.
The Committee Services Manager must receive your question at least five full working days before the date of the meeting. Saturdays and Sundays and bank holidays do not count as ‘working days’.
| Date of ordinary meeting of council | Time by which your question should be received |
|---|---|
| Thursday 12th December 2024 | Wednesday 4th December 2024 |
The recent budget presented by the government will see the following changes from April 2025:
1. The rate of employer’s NI contributions (NICs), will increased by 1.2% points to 15%,
2. The lowering of the secondary threshold (ST), which will mean employers will start to pay NICs on employees earnings from £5,000 instead of the current £9,100 threshold and
3. An increase of 6.7% in the national minimum wage from £11.44 to £12.21.
What will be the financial impact of each of these changes for Thanet District Council in the next financial year in terms of the amount of additional money to be found and where will this money come from?
Response:
The impact of Employers NI increasing to 15% will lead to a £175k impact to TDC. The government has fully committed to fund local authorities for any additional direct staff costs in relation to this.
The impact of lowering the secondary threshold will be a 323k impact to TDC. Again the government has fully committed to fund local authorities in relation to this.
In relation to the National Living Wage increase, this will result in a £98k increase in staff costs. The council is actively addressing this as part of the overall cost of its staff pay for next year’s budget setting.
One reason we have delayed presenting a draft budget this side of Christmas is the financial settlement this Council receives is still to be finalised, so in January we will be presenting the budget, which will show in detail exactly how our funding pressures will be met.
“Can the leader please confirm that all residents in my ward who are affected by the proposal to use council owned farmland for non-farming purposes have been properly notified by letter as part of the consultation process?”
Response:
I can confirm that the council posted letters directly to 1,370 households in proximity to the proposed site on land between Shottendane Road and Caxton Road, in Garlinge. Letters were posted on Thursday 10 October 2024.
Addresses were drawn from a significantly larger area than that covered by a statutory planning consultation and included all addresses in the area between High Street, Garlinge and Hartsdown Road and between George V Avenue and Shottendane Road. Addresses to the south of Shottendane Road were also included.
Details of the consultation were posted on Your Voice Thanet on 9 October and supported by an article posted on the council’s website.
In addition the Council posted a link on the council’s facebook page on 9 October and again on 24 October. It also was included in the council’s The Wave newsletter, which is read by more than 4,000 residents, on 3 October and again on 7 November.
The consultation was live and closes on 17 December 2024.
Green & Independent Group members wholeheartedly welcome the Government’s current consultation on enabling remote attendance and proxy voting at local authority meetings.
We know from our experience during the pandemic that greater flexibility in modes of attendance helps us all fulfil our duties more easily, enabling better use of our time, making participation easier for members juggling work and family commitments and reducing our carbon emissions.
Enabling remote attendance and proxy voting for appropriate meetings would, in the longer term, also make it easier for us to recruit a wider and more representative range of Councillor candidates, to the benefit of this Council and the communities we serve.
Can the Leader assure us that the Council will be responding positively to the consultation, and that if the measures are approved, we will give full consideration to how we might best use the new flexibilities here in Thanet?
Response:
The council will be responding positively to the consultation regarding remote attendance at meetings. It was agreed that councils should have the flexibility to make their own arrangements to best suit their individual circumstances. This doesn’t mean that the council would necessarily embrace complete flexibility, because there could be challenges in running fully hybrid meetings, but we think it should be a local choice. It will also need to reflect the technology that is available to the council.
However, the council was not in favour of proxy voting. There are a host of potential issues with proxy voting, particularly regarding predetermination at regulatory committees.
The council will look carefully at any new legislation and any subsequent best practice guidance and consider what arrangements suit TDC best.
Assuming there is flexibility in the legislation these will ultimately be decisions for all councillors to make as they will need to be incorporated into the constitution.
As members may be aware, Biodiversity Net Gain on all new builds is now a legal requirement from 12th February 2024 for major projects and April 2024 for small new builds. Please can planning confirm how many developments so far in Thanet are now having to adhere to that criteria and how planning are monitoring this practically on the ground, so the developers honour ongoing aftercare/management to genuinely achieve the 10% higher level of biodiversity under these new legal obligations.
Response:
Since the changes to regulations were enacted for major and minor applications, 194 applications have been received which could have been required to provide the 10% statutory net gain, however the majority of these applications were exempt due to being either de minimis (as the area of habitat on the site is less than 25sqm), retrospective or self build development. 36 planning applications of those submitted are required to provide 10% net gain, with the BNG metric submitted. Only 4 have so far been approved, which will be subject to requirement for a Biodiversity net gain plan to be submitted, outlining whether the BNG is provided on site, off site or whether statutory credits are purchased. The Council is yet to receive any BNG plans as developments on those applications are yet to progress. We are also considering the need for a monitoring fee through planning obligations to ensure that the Council has sufficient resources to monitor when significant on-site biodiversity net gain is proposed, as well as monitoring new developments through the enforcement of planning conditions.
“Does the Leader believe that a change should be made to the Minutes of Full Council meetings to record when a Councillor leaves early?”
Response:
Council minutes usually reflect this information and consequently no change is required to current practice in this regard. If this suggestion has arisen as a result of a failure to record such information at any earlier council meetings, it was recommended that an approach be made to Democratic Services requesting an amendment to the relevant minutes. It was evident that a large number of councillors left well before the end of the last meeting, even though it finished before 10pm. The council was understanding to personal circumstances which sometimes require individual councillors to leave early, but when half or even the whole of a political group goes missing it would seem appropriate that a public record was kept in the interests of transparency
‘May have an update on progress (or future plan) to let the sports pavilion in Northdown Park to a suitable community organisation. If no tenant with agreed terms has been identified to date what is TDC doing to make the offering more attractive, ie asking rental, term and assisting with refurb costs?’
Response:
The council had marketed the sports pavilion at Northdown Park and had received interest from potential tenants. The council had progressed with a preferred tenant and are currently in the process of agreeing the terms for the lease. Officers will provide an update to the ward members once the negotiation and agreement process has been completed. Regarding the rent, there was no need to discuss adjustments to attract more tenants, as we currently have a tenant lined up for the sports pavilion.
‘”TDC fell short of meeting housing targets by 4%; 71% of housing applications had been ‘achieved’ within the Government’s cut-off deadline. Can you confirm whether or not developments, such as the 200 properties earmarked for the Deaf School site (which is seen as a windfall), go towards reducing our housing target figure of 17,140 houses? The council was short by 4% – how many houses was that figure?”
Response:
All Local Plan allocations, and new developments with planning permission (including “windfall” permissions), count towards meeting the Councils’ housing requirements. The 4% shortfall against the HDT 75% threshold represents 83 units.
Councillors would be aware that the housing delivery target is taken as an average over the previous three years, and in fact the figure of 71% comes from the 2022 HDT and looks backward to 2019, albeit adjusted for Covid impacts. No HDT results for 2023 have been published by the government.
The local plan includes a step change increase in the annual housing target after 2021, which was introduced during examination, so the bar will be higher for later years.
However, there are many factors that affect housing delivery, including market conditions, and most of them are not within the council’s control.
The council’s own ambitious housing programme is helping to boost supply, including building new homes on council land, but the rate of delivery is largely determined by the appetite of developers.
“The current TDC Local Plan includes an objective that new developments include 30% affordable housing, yet even massive development projects regularly claim that they cannot achieve this figure, despite huge economies of scale. These residences are meant to be for the benefit of the local population, and to offset the effects of a vastly inflated housing market that bears no relationship to local income levels.
The Planning Committee on 26/11/24 approved a huge development of 1600 houses which will destroy the fields surrounding Birchington, whilst allowing the developer to offer only approximately 50% of TDC’s stated policy objective. At said meeting, an officer stated they didn’t how many developments had achieved the 30% target, so my question to Cllr Whitehead is, “How many developments have been approved since January 2022 which actually achieve our stated objective of 30%, and how many have been approved which do not?”
Response:
Policy SP23 stated that housing applications for more than 10 dwellings are required to provide 30% affordable housing unless meeting that requirement would demonstrably make the proposed development unviable.
The council did not simply accept the viability claims of the developer, it commissions an independent assessment of their calculation and uses that as a basis for decision-making.
Since the 1st January 2022, the Council had approved 21 applications for more than 10 dwellings either in outline or full planning permission where the affordable housing requirement was triggered. Of these, 12 provided 30% on-site affordable housing, 3 provided a reduced amount of affordable housing, 4 provided a contribution to affordable housing in the area, and 2 did not provide affordable housing as it was demonstrated with evidence that the developments would be un-viable if it was provided. In the same period, the planning inspectorate approved 3 applications refused by the Council for more than 10 dwellings, one with 30% affordable, one with 15% affordable housing, and one with a contribution to affordable housing.
With all the regeneration taking place in Thanet, can you tell us when this council will ever tackle or deal with the long standing blight on Margate that is Arlington Arcade?’
Response:
The council owned the freehold of Arlington Arcade, with the head lease held by Metropolitan Property Realisations Ltd. In the same way as Arlington House itself, the council’s ability to take any action under the lease is extremely limited. The council did have a power to inspect, but it is for the leaseholder to decide about the use of the space and the lease includes no powers for the council to force the leaseholder to take action to bring the arcade back into use.
The council also has enforcement powers related to both Building Control and Planning Enforcement. However neither regime provides the council with the power to compel the redevelopment of the site. We will continue to monitor the site to ensure that it remains properly hoarded and that it doesn’t pose a risk to the public.
The government has introduced new regulations linked to the Levelling Up Act 2023 to introduce High Street Retail Auctions. We will be investigating these new powers to see if it gives us the ability to take any meaningful action to bring disused retail space back into use. The extent to which these new powers may or may not be appropriate for Arlington Arcade is not yet known.
As we know, nature is in crisis; with plummeting insect numbers, massive habitat loss and a changing climate we have many challenges ahead. The UK is one of the least biodiverse countries in the world and Thanet is a particularly challenged area. I would therefore like to ask the leader of the council if the council is fully prepared for the release of the Making Space for Nature report, the first ever Local Nature Recovery Strategy for Kent, when it is released in January and which department, member or officer will be responsible for taking any actions that are recommended?
Response:
The Kent & Medway Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) due to be published in January will be a draft on which individuals and organisations across Kent can comment, before the Strategy is finalised.
KCC is the lead authority for the LNRS, and Council officers have been involved in a number of early engagement meetings with KCC, as part of the role of the Council as a “supporting authority” for the LNRS. The Council’s response to the consultation will involve a range of relevant departments.
“Information source KCC: ‘The birth rate has fallen in Thanet steadily since 2017 and continues to decrease. Kent Published Admission Number (PAN) for St Saviours school in Westgate on Sea to reduce from 96 to 64 from September 2025. PAN for St Crispin’s Community Primary Infant School to reduce from 90 to 60 .
How can Thanet District Council continue to support Thanet’s high housing number targets with this clear evidence that Thanet’s population is shrinking instead of growing. Furthermore, if organizations like KCC are reducing services like education provision based on local population data, if Thanet District Council believes the population will grow from inward migration, how is KCC to provide adequate education provision for Thanet, when our local council is approving planning applications for mass developments for residents outside our district?”
Response:
The current Government methodology is based on total population change in the district over the whole Local Plan period to 2031. This includes long-term trends in births, deaths, in-migration and out-migration. The figures are not based solely on Thanet birth-rates or just on natural population change within the district. It is not possible to make judgements about longer-term future population projections based on short-term trends, or single-year figures.
The annual KCC education commissioning plans are based on different statistics and as it happens I met the KCC cabinet member and the officer responsible for planning school places in Thanet just last week. Their place planning is dynamic and adjusted annually, meaning that it will change to reflect planning consents as they are granted and because children don’t enter school as soon as they are born they have time to make appropriate adjustments to the plan.
The Local Plan contains requirements for the provision of schools over the whole Plan period, and beyond, based on previous assessed requirements from KCC. The decisions on when to bring forward different elements of that provision are obviously dependent to some extent on short-term changes in school cohorts.
The Council liaises with service providers as part of the Local Plan process, and will be doing so again in relation to the new Local Plan, to seek to ensure that services are provided in a timely way, alongside new development.
It was considered quite interesting if new developments that have been completed are not placing stress on school places, because it seems to contradict the claim that the houses being built are being occupied by people arriving from outside the district, unless we are also to believe that none of them have children of school age.
The people of Thanet are objecting to the destruction or Thanet’s farm land. Also to the lack of democracy within TDC. We are appalled at the vote by every labour Councillor for the excessive building within an area already struggling with public services including the NHS. Also the roads aren’t up to dealing with another 30.000 vehicles. Why are so many decisions made behind closed doors?
Response:
This question would be responded to in writing, as the questioner was not present at the meeting.
This summer, TDC threatened legal action against GRASS Cliftonville CIC and required us to remove railing banners promoting The Oval’s charity events. These actions were taken under advertising restrictions that are poorly defined, selectively enforced by planning officers, and prohibitively expensive when applying for planning permission.
Community events are vital for tourism, community engagement, and venue sustainability. Can the Council confirm whether it plans to create and implement a policy establishing designated banner advertising spaces in high-footfall areas to support organisations promoting such events? If not, what measures will the Council take to ensure community and charitable events can be effectively promoted without incurring prohibitive costs or risking enforcement actions?
As a constructive suggestion, could the Council collaborate with organisations such as Visit Thanet to identify suitable locations and manage fair access to these spaces? This would provide an invaluable tool to support local cultural activities while reducing unsightly fly-posting.
Response:
The Council will investigate unauthorised advertisement posting, which is a criminal offence, irrespective of who carried out the breach. Notwithstanding this, the Council recognises the contribution made by community organisations and local business to social and economic wellbeing, and we will consider the need for a policy/strategy to cover advertisements and the potential for approved areas for posting events.
The Council did currently have a local plan policy, QD06 covering the advertising. Any potential locations would need to be considered within the context of this policy.
Policy QD06 reads as follows:
Applications for advertisements will be considered in relation to their effects upon amenity and public safety. Regard will be paid to the surrounding location, manner of illumination (if proposed), material composition, design and relationship to the land, building or structure to which they are to be affixed. Advertisements should not dominate but should be in balance with the character, townscape and architecture of the buildings on which they are situated. Regard should be paid to the proximity of any listed buildings or structures, and any impact to their setting.
In and adjoining conservation areas the Council will require that the design and siting of advertisements does not detract from, and preferably makes a positive contribution to, the character and/or appearance of the area.
As a consequence of implementing the current Local Plan, Thanet is becoming a vast urban sprawl. It’s the size of a city but unplanned and without essential infrastructure and services to support it. You are reviewing that Plan. This will inevitably result in more agricultural land being allocated for development. Please can you outline the strategic approach you are taking, particularly the criteria for allocating sites and when residents will be informed of your proposals. Thank you.
Response:
In assessing sites for potential allocation in the Local Plan, a range of issues will need to be considered in line with Government guidance – namely, suitability (in planning terms); availability (landowner support); and achievability (whether the site is considered to be capable of delivery within the Plan period). Government guidance on how land and sites should be assessed is set out in the Planning Practice Guidance Note on “Housing and economic land availability assessment”. Sites are also assessed under separate criteria as part of the Sustainability Appraisal process.
It is unlikely that the Council will be in a position to consult on these matters until the end of next year.
Question from Mr Solly to Cllr Everitt:
Regarding Councillors Wings comments on the planning committee on November 26th where affordable housing was in debate and some answers was not available from officers.
Can the council answer the question to how much affordable housing has been approved and delivered in the local plan period so far, as a percentage? And how many affordable houses are planned in the local plan period?
Response:
The Local Plan has a policy that seeks 30% affordable housing to be delivered on qualifying sites (sites of more than ten dwellings), subject to viability, in line with Government guidance.
So far, during the Local Plan period (to the end of the 2023-24 monitoring year), 1,182 affordable units have been delivered in the district, either via s106 agreements or directly by social housing providers, including the council itself. Housing completions over the same period total 5,398, which would mean that affordable dwellings comprise 22% of the total completions. (However, it is important to note that the total completions figure provided includes non-qualifying sites; that the rate of affordable housing can vary substantially between sites; and that some affordable housing provision is not linked directly to s106 requirements).
Of those councillors who sit on TDC’s Planning Committee how many have had any external training on planning, e.g. by bodies such as the Planning Advisory Service (PAS) or the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), as recommended by the LGA, Probity in Planning, Dec 2019.
Response:
None of the members of Planning Committee have had training from PAS or the RTPI arranged by the Council, however all Planning Committee members have received planning training delivered internally within the last year and it is set out in the Council’s constitution that all Councillors must have this planning training before they can sit on the Committee. The Council always seeks to ensure that members of its Committees have the relevant training in order to make sound and cogent decisions.
Notably PAS’s own guidance cites as best practice named authorities who appear to carry out their own training and I was also pleased to see Thanet’s planning committee arrangements identified by PAS as providing best practice in another aspect of their guidance.
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| Date of past ordinary meeting of council | Questions asked at council meeting |
|---|---|
| Thursday, 10 December 2020 | |
| Thursday, 25 February 2021 | |
| Thursday, 25 March 2021 | |
| Thursday, 3 June 2021 | |
| Thursday, 15 July 2021 | |
| Thursday, 9 September 2021 | |
| Thursday, 14 October 2021 | |
| Wednesday, 12 January 2022 | |
| Thursday, 24 February 2022 | |
| Thursday, 31 March 2022 | |
| Thursday, 14 July 2022 | |
| Thursday, 8 September and Thursday 13 October 2022 | |
| Thursday, 8 December 2022 | |
| Thursday, 23 February 2023 | |
| Thursday, 22 February 2024 | |
| Thursday, 28 March 2024 | |
| Thursday, 11 July 2024 |
Questions from earlier Council meetings can be found in our archive.
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