On 5 February, I blogged that this planning application had been withdrawn from the planning committee agenda at VERY short notice, and at the time it was stated that this was because it was realised, NINE MONTHS after a tree report had been lodged, that it had not been loaded to the website. It turns out that this was not the whole story. A council tree expert who was consulted for the first time in early February expressed serious doubts about the impact of this development on the existing trees, and I'm sure it was this concern which caused the application to be withdrawn from committee.
Roll forward to 24th February, by which time several new drawings and a different tree report have been uploaded, while the previous report has been withdrawn. We are now told that this item has again been withdrawn from the agenda, on the grounds that not enough time has been provided for residents to view the new drawings and decide whether to make fresh representations on the basis of the new report and drawings. Why the unseemly haste?
This sorry saga does not give me any confidence that the Labour Cabinet member for Planning has got a grip on the way in which his department is run.
