Local residents lose out again
Local councillors have always been able to ask officers to send planning applications to committee, in response to residents requests or if they had concerns about an application, but that right has now been removed.
Any request has now to go through the Conservative Chair of Planning, Councillor Les Kew, who is based in High Littleton and last week he refused my request for a local application to go to committee.
With respect to Cllr Kew, he knows little about Combe Down (why should he), but he made this refusal without any reference to myself or Cherry. Officers and councillors all work to the Council’s Local Plan, but local councillors often have that extra bit of local knowledge about what is good for their communities, that officers and councillors from other areas do not have. It can make all the difference to a decision on a Planning Application.
Our view is that by removing this right of referral, democracy has suffered and this is just one more example of how power is being taken centrally back into the Guildhall, where more and more decisions are being made behind closed doors.
2 Comments
have your say
Roger, I’m afraid that councillors of all political parties are ‘guilty’ of ignoring the wishes of local residents. Just look at the support that Bath University got from councillors, when it wanted to build on Green Belt; and there are countless other examples of representatives of ALL parties overturning or rejecting the needs and wishes of local residents. What happens to people when they get elected? Local needs should come before party allegiance.
Hi Terry
Thanks for commenting. There is a balance to be struck with planning policy and with big planning applications that affect everyone in B&NES. Residents themselves are often almost equally split on these issues. It is then up to councillors to make a judgement. What i am talking about here are the little local applications that don’t affect anyone except immediate neighbours. These sometimes benefit from local knowledge and a wider view that cannot be expressed by council officers, but can be by councillors. Now it is much more difficult to obtain this view than in the past.