In the olden days (remember them?) you used to get your packet of CrunchyCornyWheatyFlakes and empty out all the cereal just to see if you could find that free gift of a miniature Thunderbird 4 hidden away at the bottom. If you didn’t, you’d likely swallow it. Maybe they still do this? I wouldn’t know as for breakfast now I just have a bowl of raw liver, obviously with a side helping of natural Greek yogurt (for health reasons). For most of the time I’ve been on council I’d regularly get a series of brown envelopes through the post, sometimes 3 a week, and I did the same, I tipped them out in the expectation of finding a small white envelope inside the brown envelope containing some bung from some developer trying to buy my vote. But not once. Not once in 36 years did this happen.
Yet some people think it does. People (well, 90% Russian bots) keep posting that all councillors are in it for the brown envelopes and have some deep dark deepstate plan to do the opposite of what everyone wants. Just a smidgin of thought to that makes it very unlikely doesn’t it…
Wedged
When I started on Sedgemoor District Council, we’d get a massive brown envelope which I’d often find wedged in my letterbox. Sometimes it contained 500 pages of reports. Nobody in their right mind would read every dot and every comma of that. Of course I don’t include councillors. They just LOVE this kind of thing. For me if it was a choice between watching ‘Major Dundee’ for the 40th time or reading a 300-page report on the ring road redevelopment scheme around Highbridge I know which I’d choose. ‘Follow! Follow the Major!!”
It didn’t help of course that former Tory MP Neil Hamilton indeed became famous for taking brown envelopes full of ‘cash for questions’. He left the Tory party in shame. And joined UKIP. I’m not of course holding him up as any kind of morality guru. He was last seen on the Johnny Vegas Show ’18 Stone Idiot’ dancing in a Perspex box while Vegas and members of the public poured buckets of fish over his head.
It’s a funny old world is politics.
Pledged
What I wanted to highlight this week is how planning works locally. Councillors are often accused of prejudging matters and actively planning to harm communities. In fact, the system has strong checks and balances in place to ensure this doesn’t happen.
Planning decisions are taken one at a time locally by a committee of County Councillors. Following the unitary change Somerset kept the former districts (ie Sedgemoor in our case) and each district planning committee only deals with the planning matters in that area. Sedgemoor is Planning Area North- which admittedly sounds like the area of Sanctuary you try to escape to in Logans Run only to find ‘sanctuary does not exist and ‘renewal ‘is a lie’. (don’t ask me, just watch the film)
All the councillors on those planning committees have to act as if they were an independent jury and come to each decision without predetermination. That means that if councillors say in advance what their view is on a planning application, then they can’t take part in the vote as they’re ‘predetermined’.
This also means that ward councillors can have an opinion and can raise objection or support an application and even speak at a committee meeting. But if they’re on the planning committee and want to argue the case and vote then they can’t make up their minds ahead of the debate.
Dredged
Below the level of County Council there are local Town and Parish panels that can have their say. On Bridgwater Town Council we have a Planning ‘Panel’ which is chaired by Councillor Tim Mander and consists of town councillors from all parties, but who are not on the county council. This body can also take a view and make representation to the senior committee which takes the decision. Bridgwater Town has been very consistent in opposing HMO’s for instance
Applications first go to Town Panel (and a range of other consultees-Highways, Ecologists,
Conservationists, Residents etc) and then to County Planning. Somerset North area is chaired by Bridgwater Labour councillor Kathy Pearce, and she runs a tight ship.
Sometimes the decisions are easy and there’s no argument and the outcome is unanimous but on other occasions the public turn up in their multitudes expecting just one blindingly obvious outcome. And sometimes it’s the role of the Chair or a cunning ward councillor to steer the committee and officers or make the case for the best possible compromise.
Planning committees are not for the faint hearted. And sometimes they’re a mystery to people. But they’re a lot better than the ‘olden days’ when the feudal landlord could turn up, evict you, fill your land full of sheep and then build a factory on your rockery.
No one wants to go back to the good old days….do we??