In light of this week’s Chronicle I thought I’d better write a little about Development Control Committee, or ‘planning’.

Normally I try to keep this blog to mostly interesting local news items, with occasional mention mentions of council meetings – the Regulatory (Access) Committee is as fun as it sounds. To test this , I have set up a running poll to the left hand side of this page, just below the links. Kindly vote for ‘more’ or fewer’ committee stories, so that I don’t waste anyone’s time with long meeting minutes in the future.

However, last month’s planning meeting has spilt considerably into the news realm, with accusations of coersion, dishonesty and impropriety over the park and ride applications.

I voted to support two park and ride proposals, at Lansdown and Odd Down (although I am quite proud to have voted against this at a previous meeting). However, I could not support the third – an application to concrete over the river-side meadow at Bathampton for a 1,400 space car park (yes, I do know the Joni Mitchell song; by apparent co-incidence I returned home after the seven hour planning meeting to hear Big Yellow Taxi on the sterio). Given the level of congestion on the London Road and suppressed demand, the traffic report showed that the scheme would allow 1,400 extra car drivers into the city centre, without any reduction in congestion or pollution. This I assessed as particularly small gain, far outweighed by the huge inherent cost of paving an alluvial meadow in such an idyllic spot.

However, others did not agree with me, indeed two Liberal Democrats voted for the scheme, demonstrating an entirely split party vote. However, all six of the Conservative panel members backed the Conservative Cabinet’s scheme. Quasi-judicial committees such as planning should not operate a party whip system. It is entirely possible that the Conservative members, all being men of similar ages and backgrounds, chose by chance to vote in the same manner. I trust that this will be investigated by the standards board in course. However, the Liberal Democrats do not operate a party whip system on planning, or indeed any other meeting. At council meetings, we tend to vote together because we agree with each other!

The Newbridge Park and Ride and associated bus road application was not determined by the planning committee. Instead, the committee deferred the application as it felt that not enough evidence had been provided to support the scheme. Certainly, I felt the the transport justification was insubstantial, and voted to wait until more information was provided.

A government minister has now suspended the planning application while he decides whether to let the council decide it, or whether he will send it to a government inspector to decide. If it does come back to BathNES, it will come before my committee again, so at this point -to avoid impropriety – I should stop typing.