The Council’s Development Control Committee has approved the planning application for 204 houses on the former MoD site at Warminster Road. The project will include two access points from Warminster Road, open spaces and landscaping, a pumping station and associated engineering works. There is also a provision of land for expansion of Bathwick St Mary Primary School, which is immediately adajcent to the site.
Commenting, Cllr David Martin said “there were a number of detailed objections to the scheme from local residents and from other consultees, regarding issues such as overlooking nearby properties and the layout and design features. At the Committee meeting I expressed concerns about these issues. However, the Committee accepted the planning officer’s recommendation to permit the development, which is likely to proceed fairly swiftly”.
it appears that planning law was broken in this application and continues to be broken. Changes in the plans have appeared on the website after it was passed, but the correspondence shows that the officers were aware of this before the council meeting – the public were not and have been deprived of their legal right to comment. Every time that new plans were submitted new site notices should hve been posted. They were not.
The alternative proposal should never had been validated – it does not take much wit to see that required documentation was missing. so why was it – and why did a very senior planning officer assure the councillors that it represented a threat. In fact, many resdients considered it preferable. I trust that, in the light of this, our councillors will be pushing for it to be called in, in support of residents who are, at present, struggling with remedies to get it stopped – as it certianlyu should be – without any support. Furthermore, the applicaiton was quite clearly in breach of the core strategy.
I am personally carrying out my own investigation to see if I can discover wrong doing. If that happens, I wil be presenting my case to the police. I also intend to go to the press with this sorry story, unless Bath and North East Somerset Council can be seen to be trying to rectify this glaring incompetence by assuring the Secretary of State that it MUST be called in.