Podcast episode 149: Who's In Control

Podcast episode 149 is available now via this link or from Apple and Spotify.

What do you make of this, Readers? It is from an article that I came across on the Nation Cymru website back in July.

Wrexham Council will defend its opposition to plans for 600 homes on land south of Holt Road against the advice of planning officers.

The application is due to go to appeal on September 29 but at a meeting of Wrexham County Borough Council’s Planning Committee on Monday, senior planning officer Matthew Phillips said no-one within the council’s planning department could represent the council in front of Planning and Environment Decisions Wales inspectors.

“I would be in a difficult position defending that as it would go contrary to the Royal Town Planning Institute’s professional charter which says officers shouldn’t try to defend a position contrary to their professional recommendation in an inquiry,” he said.

The responses that I received when I shared that with a few people convinced me that this was fertile ground for a 50 Shades episode.

Why shouldn’t a professional planner (albeit not the original recommending officer) be able to support a different weighing of the issues by members and put that case forward at an appeal on their behalf? That would, at the very least, save on the cost of consultants.

On the other side of the coin, if the integrity of professional opinion is not sacred is the system not fundamentally undermined? And if councillors did have to defend decisions taken against an officer’s recommendation would it not focus minds more and encourage less playing to the gallery?

How to take decisions, how to write reports, and how to weigh the professional judgment of planners against the democratic accountability of councillors are the themes that you will hear discussed in this episode by friends of the podcast Mike Kiely, Simon Ricketts, Annie Gingell, Gilian Macinnes and Ben Woolnough, who were steered along the way by Hashi Mohamed.

Comments

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