Richard Baum

At Council on Wednesday the Lib Dems attempted to convince the Chair of the Planning Committee to change the rules on how local people can be represented at Planning meetings.

At the moment, ward councillors can speak on behalf of residents. But last year people in my ward were left without representation because two of their three Councillors were on the committee (and so forbidden from speaking), and the third was unavailable. I wwas not yet elected, so couldn’t help either.

Lib Dems tried to speak up for local people at that meeting by nominating a Councillor from the ward next door to speak instead in residents’ behalf. Despite the fact that this substitute Councillor was Chair of the local Area Board which comprised the ward in question, and lived in the ward concerned, he was not allowed to speak, and thus the residents were not represented.

We asked the question on Wednesday night as to whether this situation could be prevented from happening in future with the addition of a new clause in the rules of the Planning Committee allowing for Councillors from a neighbouring ward to speak on residents’ behalf if none of the three ward Councillors was available.

We weren’t opening the floodgates to anarchy, simply suggesting that, in the unlikely event of residents being left in the lurch again through no fault of their own, there’d be some alternative for them. The new clause would only be invoked if there was no way any ward Councillors could speak. It wouldn’t have been an opportunity to ignore a local ward Councillor and go to one from another party in the next ward, say. If a ward Councillor was available, then only he/she could speak, not any other Councillor. 

The Lib Dem proposal simply allowed for representation from a nearby Councillor when none from the ward were free.

I was disappointed with the reaction of the Chair of Planning, who refused to allow the amendment to the rules. He said that this was not compliant with the constitution of the Council related to Planning meetings. But this was simply saying “we can’t change the rules because the new rules conflict with the current rules.” Well, that’s exactly the point! The new rules would indeed require a constitutional change, but this is easily done, and it’s clearly for the common good.

Rather than take the opportunity to increase representation for local people, and close a loophole which left lots of local people frustrated last year, Cllr Cohen (Chair of Planning, Conservative) decided that the rules were inflexible and shouldn’t be changed. His reasoning was illogical and petty.

I think this is a silly decision, and does nothing to improve the reputation of the Council.

When it comes to giving people more of a say, we should seize the opportunity, not cite arcane rules that make no sense and can be easily changed.

Rick