An answer on planning

Published: 2 September, 2010

• BY promising to investigate why officers used their delegated powers to grant planning permission to the dodgy development on Estelle Road (Answers, Letters, August 26), Councillor Sean Birch is either revealing that he does not understand planning process or that he is taking us for fools.

Isn’t he aware that the decision to delegate the handling of individual planning applications to officers is made by nominated councillors of the development control, who review objections at a weekly briefing and that, indeed, this happens to over 90 per cent of applications?

Doesn’t he also know that if he and his fellow ward councillors had highlighted the contentious nature of the Estelle Road planning application by objecting to it, it most certainly would have been taken out of the hands of officers and delegated to councillors on the development control committee? He should know all this because he sits on the development control committee.

The nominated councillors, at their briefing, presumably deduced the application was not contentious enough to warrant being taken out of the hands of officers, on the basis that none of the three ward councillors had objected to it.

Now, faced with an angry backlash against subsequent approval, the Gospel Oak councillors are seeking to cover up their failure to make a representation, by shifting the blame. Why don’t they cease with this cowardly ploy and just admit their failure?

KEITH SEDGWICK
Former Conservative councillor for Gospel Oak