Motion for “transparency” in planning decisions voted down by Tories Options

[Andy Capp]

I know this has been started elsewhere, but they chose not to have a 'sensible' title and it would therefore be harder to find again in the future.

Defending the decision, executive portfolio holder for planning, Hilary Cole (Con, Chieveley) said: “A frank and honest discussion was had.

“Every member [of the task group] had the chance to vote for or against the change. I would like to reiterate that we did have 4,500 responses to the consultation…that we would not have got had this meeting been held in public because people make these responses from the comfort of their own home, in their own time. I think it’s a brilliant example of how we can get a genuine response from our residents, rather than responses that are talked up by the Liberal Democrats.”

OK, this comment is edited, but does anyone know what she is going on about? Also, does anyone know who are the 'secret' 12?

http://www.newburytoday.co.uk/2014/motion-...-down-by-tories

[gel]

Cole has previous re disregarding the view of taxpayer.

She had the Environment portfolio previously where the justification for
Dropping weekly black bin collections was a flawed public consultation -this
Was to tiny % of electorate and made no reference to weekly collections.

Just a vague ( but it turned out a very loaded) question "Do you support more recycling?"

As reasonable people probably voted in affirmative to this was then twisted to
Mean they also were happy to dump weekly black bin round.

[Simon Kirby]

Closed meetings obstruct accountability, but as Swift-Hook's Town Council has more than its share of secret meetings to hide its abuses from the right-minded tax-paying public then I don't see that JSH has any credibility to criticise. If JSH wants to make a stand for openness and accountability he can do worse than look to put NTC in order - I'd like to see how that particular turkey would vote.

[blackdog]

I suspect there is a lot of politicking going on here.

While I have no idea who the 12 members of the planning policy task group are I suspect I could name one - the head of planning policy at WBC.

I'm suspect it is the group, mainly planners, who are developing the next phase of the Local Planning Development Framework (they used to call it a Local Plan - which was obviously too short a title for them). They have done a lot of consulting as they have developed the reams of paper required to satisfy the government that they have done the job properly. However, if you ignore the articles in the local paper and don't look at their website or can't be bothered to read through the hundreds of pages of detailed bumph available on the website the you aren't very likely to be consulted.

Planning is an incredibly emotive issue and councillors don't really like it that they haven't really got much power to affect it - but, ultimately it is a Whitehall civil servant from the Planning Inspectorate who has the last say and he/she will ignore local objections that are not based on assessments against acceptable criteria - which is what the planning policy team at West Berks are employed to do effectively.

Ther current furore is about the latest planning policy document which went out in draft a few months ago for consultation - it identifies sites all over West Berks that the policy team deem the most suitable to build on (with very limited reasoning shown). Individual councillors are up in arms against the use of specific sites, usually in their ward. The real problem is that the council have only two choices - identify sites and limit building to these (they must provide enough sites to fulfill a set target number of new homes), or not develop a plan and pretty much let the developers decide where to build.

The transparency issue is a real one, but nothing to do with them holding meetings in public - what is obscure is the nitty gritty of the way sites are compared and the most suitable chosen. This doesn't come out in meetings - it's all in the reports comparing assessments etc that rarely see the light of day.