Officer cracks down on planning referrals

7:32pm Monday 28th January 2008

Comments (2)   Have your say »

Pembrokeshire County Council's monitoring officer today outlined measures to crack down on instances of councillors bulldozing controversial planning applications through, against officer advice.

Two such planning applications approved in December 2006, one for a house at Bwlch Gwynt, Hermon, and another at Allt-y-Ddol, Eglwyswrw have been called in by the Welsh Assembly as "departures from policy". I In a report to the council's planning (delegation) sub-committee this morning, the Monitoring Officer spelled out the criteria for requests by members for applications to go to the full planning committee rather than be decided by officers' delegated powers.

He said the sub-committee at its four previous meetings had approved 70% of referral requests 86% of which were also outside Development Plan policies.

The criteria meant referral relied upon applications giving rise to public concern relating to impact on more than the immediate neighbours or policy conflict.

They must not be based on the popularity of the application but must follow an objective assessment of material planning considerations.

"There is no evidence in the minutes that material planning considerations were provided in support of the referrals ... the sub-committee's decisions may have given the referred applications misplaced merit in planning terms in the consideration of the planning committee," he stated.

He suggested the sub-committee may have misconstrued the term "expression of public concern," apparently regarding the criteria as relating to the personal circumstances of the applicant or objector or the popularity of the application.

"Undue weight would appear to have been given to the non-material issues put forward by the respective local members," his report added.

Lack of specific training may have been an indirect cause of members' misconception and "requests for referral may have been motivated by dissatisfaction with anticipated officer decision."

During a discussion at Monday's sub-committee, when four requests for referral by two local councillors were rejected, the Monitoring Officer commented: "Planning is very abstract - it looks at a piece of land in isolation to people. This is one item in the Council's remit where you ignore people because it is a land issue."