The Committee
received an application for reserved matters.
The application
sought approval for the reserved
matters pursuant to outline approval 06/0796/OUT for a total of 59,821sqm
(Gross External Area excluding plant) Bitotech and
Biomedical Research and Development floorspace, to
include:
i) R&D Centre and Corporate Headquarters,
ii) R&D Enabling
Building,
iii) Support Building and
Energy Centre,
iv) Associated car, motorbike
and cycle parking,
v) Hard and soft landscaping,
vi)Internal roads, supporting facilities and ancillary
infrastructure.
The Planning Officer referred to the amendment sheet which had been circulated
prior to the meeting. Three bullet points were identified with further
objections to the application with officer responses to those three points.
Also included was a summary of a letter circulated to the Committee from the
British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) in which there were
three main points.
The Legal Advisor to the Committee explained on the first bullet point
which was hazardous activities on the site.
The objection included concerns that the Council did not have enough
information from the applicant, particularly on storage and disposal of
sensitive materials such as chemical waste.
No one was disputing that public safety is a
material consideration and officers had treated it as such. There were areas
governed by separate legislation and there were areas where planning
overlapped with other controls and other legislation. The key point running through case law was
that the Council needed to be satisfied that it had sufficient information on
which to base its decision as the Local Planning Authority. Here, the
Environmental Health Officer was content that the Council has received enough
information on these issues as the Local Planning Authority. If that
information had exposed an obvious risk to public safety which we believed
could not be addressed, then that could form a reason to refuse an
application - but this was not the case. There are other regimes for
controlling the storage and disposal of sensitive materials administered by
bodies such as, the Health and Safety Executive and the Environment Agency.
As part of making its decision, the Council is entitled to and should have
regard to the existence of these regimes. There was nothing to suggest that
those regulatory authorities could not or would not exercise adequate control
on those issues and the Committee was entitled to assume that these other
regulatory regimes would operate effectively.
In relation to the second point made by BUAV, the Planning Officer
advised the Committee that the Council asked the question of the applicant
through their agent whether the building design will enable compliance with
the EU Directive, and it was confirmed to the Council that it would. This was
to establish that EU Directive requirements had been part of the design
process. The BUAV letter
referred to the need for dog runs to comply with the Animals (Scientific)
Procedures Act 1986. No dog runs had been proposed and there was nothing in
the information provided by the applicant to suggest that dogs would be
proposed to be brought on site. If this were to change in the future and dogs
were brought onto the site which would require dog runs, this would need to
form a new application and would need to be considered by the Council
separately, including the noise impacts highlighted in the BUAV letter.
On the third point, concerning noise from protests, the Legal Advisor
referred to paragraph 8.147 of the report, which acknowledged that noise was
a material consideration and makes a point about the extent to which, in the
officer’s view, noise from protests could reasonably form a ground for
refusal of this application. The Legal Advisor stated that it was right to
say that noise from peaceful protest was not a direct result of the
development, in the way that noise made by visitors was, or noise made by
machinery being operated on site, for example; rather than emanating from the
development itself or its use, it was noise from third parties who might
choose to protest against what would then be a lawful, permitted use of the
site. This was a grey area, but noise
and other disturbance resulting from peaceful, lawful protest was capable of
being a material consideration. The
fact that it doesn’t flow directly from the development is a factor that made
it difficult to predict, in terms of the extent of noise and disturbance that
could be caused by protests. The weight to be given to this was a matter for
Committee. It should be noted that the police had not raised an objection to
the application. As far as unlawful activities were concerned or unlawful
breaches of the peace, it would be for the police to keep order.
|
The Committee received representations in objection to the application
from Arron Mahthai, Vikki
Semple and Lulu Agate.
The representation
from Arron Mathai covered the following issues:
i.
Expressed concern over the use of substances which
could be used as chemical warfare agents. The officers had not received
sufficient information from the applicants on such usage to properly advise the
Committee.
ii.
The issue of use of dog experimentation had not
been properly addressed by the applicants or in the Officer report. There
should be a condition put on the application so that dogs cannot be used.
iii.
Protest was a material planning consideration that
the officers had not advised the Committee properly of, so the Committee could
not make an informed decision.
The representation
from Vikki Semple covered the following issue:
i.
The applicant’s degenerative experiments on animals
were contrary to the Animal Welfare Act 2006 s41, s42, s71, s72. More information was needed on the proposed
use of animals.
The representation
from Lulu Agate covered the following issues:
i.
There would be increased vehicular movements,
leading to more noise and pollution.
ii.
There was concern about waste disposal,
contaminated animal body waste and incineration was not ideal.
iii.
The new road to Addenbrookes
was not a positive contribution to the environment.
iv.
There was increased demand on the water supply
because of all the development
The Committee received a representation in support to the application
from Dr Osbourn (on behalf of the applicant).
The Committee:
Resolved
(by 6-0 with 1 abstention) to grant the application for reserved matters in accordance
with the officer recommendation, for the reasons set out in the officer report,
and subject to the conditions recommended by the officers.