I've been contacted by a resident who is concerned that a planning application is taking an inordinate amount of time to be decided.
He originally submitted his case for consideration by the Council in November 2020. As applications go it doesn't seem to be too contentious: a relatively straightforward garage conversion to allow his elderly mother to live there instead of a care home.
There has been a large amount of pressure on the whole Council, let alone the Planning Department. Covid has had some impact, but it's worth focusing on the Council's financial predicament. Labour bankrupting the Council has meant a directive has been issued to freeze all 'non-essential recruitment'. If anyone has left the Council, either because of the bankruptcy or due to the usual churn in staffing, their positions have largely not been re-advertised and therefore the number of hands to carry out regular work has diminished.
A good number of Planning Applications are approved or rejected by Council Officers behind-closed-doors but if the application meets certain criteria (eg a large volume of community objections) then it must go to the full Planning Committee. These 10 councillors meet fortnightly to consider contentious applications. More often than not, these meeting go on for over three hours with one recently finishing at gone midnight.
The bottle-neck that Labour's incompetence has created is deeply frustrating - for residents and for councillors. Planning is not the only area suffering, it impacts everything from children's services and welfare, to business support and community affairs.
The only way to fix this situation is to get a Council Administration in charge who understands fiscal management, who listens to local people, and who will represent your priorities better than this failing Labour Council.
On 6th May this year, vote Conservative to send the signal that you won't tolerate these poorly run services. And in May 2022 vote Labour out of office, so the Conservatives can fix their mess and get Croydon back on the straight and narrow.
Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash
