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Planning can be complicated
Madam, It is obvious that your correspondent who expects councillors to follow the recommendations of officers in all planning matters (News April 7) does not understand the relationship between officers and councillors; nor is he aware of the issues that have to be taken into account when deciding on planning applications.
In most planning applications there are no problems and these are approved in the normal course of events.
However, in some complex cases, it is necessary to achieve a balance between various material planning considerations.
It sometimes happens that, although officers give more weight to certain aspects than others, the members of the planning board will take an opposite view.
I would point out that all members of the planning board have extensive training on planning matters and do not arbitrarily refuse an application which officers have recommended for approval.
This is democracy in action whereby officers give advice and the elected councillors make the decision.
In the case of the Nailers Way application there were conflicting planning considerations which needed to be weighed.
The chief executive of the council enumerated these during the meeting which considered the application.
On the one hand, we had the fact that the land was not allocated for housing in the adopted Local Plan; that building was proposed outside the built environment of Belper, which is against Local Plan policies; and the effect of the increased traffic on local residents.
Against these matters must be weighed the benefits to be obtained from the provision of additional affordable housing.
Officers considered that the latter outweighed the disadvantages of the former matters.
The majority of members took the opposite view and therefore refused the application. This was done only after lengthy debate and was not just a whim on the behalf of the councillors.
There have been several occasions in the last eleven years since I have been on the planning board where members have disagreed with officers and where the resultant enquiry has upheld the stance taken by councillors, thus justifying the decision made by members.
Cllr Alan Cox
Belper North
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Thursday 09 February 2012
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