“When is a decision not a decision? When BNES Planning Committee makes it.
After two visits to the BNES Planning Committee an application for residential development at Maynard Terrace Clutton has been overwhelmingly turned down twice.
And yet the Planning Manager has, by using an obscure procedure, decreed that the application has to go back yet again to the Planning Committee.
People are asking "What is going on?" What pressures are being brought to bear on this situation to make officers change their recommendations so dramatically. This was not a "marginal" decision, it was quite clear cut with only one vote against in Committee.
Is it the thought of having to defend a Refusal in the likelihood of an appeal with the costs involved in preparing a case and the potential of facing additional costs imposed by the Planning Inspector if he allows the appeal as in the recent case at Sleep Lane Whitchurch?
Or is it that because of the Council's failure to get its act together with its Core Strategy regarding future housing provision, which in the case of an appeal would leave them defenending the indefensible?

I think we should be told.

radstockjeff”