Oliver Twist?

On Wednesday morning, Cllr Warren Whyte, who currentlys holds the Buckinghamshire Cabinet portfolio for planning tweeted this: 

Below are the two pics of quotes he has highlighted (a little larger): 

I responded with a series of tweets (to which at the time of writing, Cllr Whyte has yet to reply):

(Please forgive the density of this debate - but please trust me - this is really important to the future of housing and other developments in the towns and parishes of Buckingham and the rest of the county)

For the last year, Buckingham Town Council, along with other parish and town councils, has been battling with the new Buckinghamshire Council (uBC) to be properly heard on planning matters. When AVDC existed, the Town Council could require that a planning application be 'called in'. This meant that the application would have to go to committee with a full report from the planning officers of the then district council. And importantly a member of the Town (or Parish) Council then had some committee time to explain the reason for objecting to an application. This has not been the case since the new Buckinghamshire Council came into being. 

The situation now is that if the Town Council Planning Committee decides, after careful advice from the TC's very experienced planning officer, to object to an application, the committee has to plead with a local uBC councillor to 'call it in'. The automatic right to have the application considered by the shire council planning committee was removed. 

This has meant that several contentious applications have simply been approved by planning officers with no decision being taken by the uBC members. When the TC has written to some local uBC councillors asking them to call in an application, these requests are often simply ignored. Or indeed in one case, the uBC councillor decided that, in his opinion, there were no grounds to object to the application and refused to call it in. Later, that same application was rejected by the planning officers - on planning grounds...

And now, having made promises to sort this matter out, Cllr Whyte seems proud of the proposals going to Buckinghamshire Council. In fact, if these changes are instituted in the constitution, this situation will be far, far worse! 

• Parish and Town Councils still have no automatic right to require that a planning application, after due consideration by them, is called in to committee
• Instead, the local (independent, elected and legally advised) parish/town councils will have to go begging, like Oliver Twist, to be granted that the application is called in
• Whereas currently any one of the local uBC councillors can call it in, this new arrangement will mean that only ONE councillor (the Chair of the local uBC planning committee) has that decision to consider. Everything will have to funnel through them as the other local uBC councillors will have had their democratic wings severely clipped. 
• Moreover, the chief planning officer is to be given the prime decision making role in deciding whether a planning application is to be called in or not. This means that the council will no longer be member led when it comes to local planning decisions. Is this democracy?
• All this makes a complete mockery of parish, town and county wide councils working together in partnership since this is a further erosion of local accountability and democracy. 

And frankly, I do not understand how such a major change can happen during purdah, when major political decisions should not be made. And moreover, this means that the outgoing uBC council (in its dying days) will be deciding the constitutional groundrules for the incoming council. This is not democracy. 

What we are seeing is a power grab by the executive and senior officers of Buckinghamshire Council. I hope these changes are thrown out by uBC councillors on 21st April. I hope we can expect these councillors to be most concerned that local people and local councils should have a proper say in local planning decisions. 

I am not writing any further about the strategic sites committee changes - as this blog is probably long enough already! Please note my tweets above. These are not good changes either!