Changes to national planning law have prompted the council to bring forward its next Planning Committee meeting.
Brighton and Hove City Council said that it would scrap a meeting scheduled for Wednesday 4 November and hold it on Wednesday 28 October instead – the day when the Chancellor John Healey is due to set out the government’s budget.
The new national rules come into force on Saturday 31 October and prevent councillors from being able to call in a planning application.
The meeting at the end of October will allow the committee to consider remaining applications which councillors have asked to be dealt with by elected members.
The new rules also mean that applications will not ordinarily go before a committee when a significant number of objections have been received.
Council planning officials will decide in private even more planning applications than they already do, with fewer being decided in public by the elected councillors serving on the council’s Planning Committee.
Labour councillors voted through changes to the council’s constitution on Thursday 1 October, with opposition councillors voting against the changes brought in by the government.
Some applications would continue to be decided by the Planning Committee if, for example, they involved issues of economic, social or environmental significance to the area or raised “a significant planning matter”.
Labour councillor Alison Thomson, who chairs the council’s Planning Committee, said: “We’re holding an extra Planning Committee meeting on (Wednesday) 28 October to consider some of the planning applications that have already been called in by members.
“These are applications which may not necessarily fit the criteria for the committee under the new scheme of delegation.”
The Planning Committee is due to meet at Hove Town Hall at 2pm on Wednesday 28 October. The meeting is scheduled to be webcast.
