EARLY ONE MORNING.........................
Liberal Democrat Councillor for Stansted North on Uttlesford District Council and former Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group Learn more
by Alan Dean on 24 February, 2016
Last night’s Planning Policy Working Group agreed, or rather reaffirmed, that a future new settlement in Uttlesford is just one of several possible ways in which housing and jobs may be distributed across the district between now and 2033.
Member did not agree to the wording published in the official papers: That the Working Group recommend to Cabinet and Full Council that a new settlement or settlements be considered seriously as an option for inclusion in the Local Plan.
The use of the word “seriously” had caused alarm that it could be read as giving preference to a new settlement over other options and would give an amber light to the Westminster Government that the council had effectively made up its mind. Suspicions remain that the Secretary of State is holding up decisions on appeals at Elsenham and Little Easton until Uttlesford sends out a welcoming smoke signal.
Instead the working group agreed the following words proposed by me: The Working Group recommends to Cabinet and Full Council that a new settlement (or settlements) should continue to be investigated and analyzed alongside other possible options for housing and employment distribution and should not be dismissed at this stage from the potential options for inclusion in the Local Plan.
We heard our officers’ explanation that they don’t want to carry out months of extensive but abortive work investigating whether a new settlement is feasible. They want to give the council the option to decide now that it doesn’t want a new settlement.
This argument is not water-tight. We were also warned by officers last night that any decision now to abandon investigation of a new settlement could probably lead to legal challenge if it were not based on sound evidence. But Members haven’t been supplied with any evidence, sound or otherwise, on which to base any such decision. One must continue to question the contradictory logic behind this advice and, therefore, what is really going on. See my previous post.
If last night’s resolution turns out to be anything beyond a meaningless gesture, there will be as yet unforeseeable consequences. The debate and questioning will continue at an Extraordinary Cabinet Meeting on March 17th followed by an Extraordinary Council Meeting on March 21st.
Three meetings to confirm something that the council is already doing? Yet our officers complain they don’t want unnecessary work!
I have tagged this post in the ethics category.
3 Comments
Exactly who is putting the pressure on elected members to make a ‘decision’ about a new settlement for Uttlesford? Well, we know – more or less – what might be happening on the political front, but what about the council’s officers? Well, for a start, they are the council’s ‘civil servants’; they have a duty cater for all eventualities and offer appropriate guidance to councillors. The point about council officers is that they have to service the demands of the council at all times: they can’t pick and choose what tasks they perform and what they don’t feel like doing. They are well-qualified professionals with the expertise which should inform the council’s political decisions. They are judged on their professionalism and their political neutrality. This leads on to the next question. Talk of the possibility for a new settlement in Uttlesford district is not new: it has been a topic for active consideration and discussion for at least 6-8 years, as the council’s interim chief executive will be in a position to confirm. Within that timespan it would be reasonable to assume that a certain amount of basic research would have been carried out on the potential for a new settlement in our district. If this wasn’t done, or was not ‘worked through’, was it because the council got itself bogged down in the contentious ‘Helsenham’ saga, which dogged the council’s Planning Department for so long? Were all the council’s eggs put into this one basket on the assumption that it was a ‘certain winner’ that would remove the need to consider other possibilities, so that all work on other options therefore effectively ceased? It seems reasonable to conclude that this may have indeed been the case, and therefore council members need to ask fundamental questions of their officers and their apparent lack of willingness and preparedness to carry out their professional duties and undertake what is asked of them. The effectiveness and decisiveness of the recent professional leadership of the council has to be called into question.
I think officers are punch-drunk by the vacillation of the last administration. One interpretation is that they don’t want yet more vascillation. This has led them to ask Members whether it is worth their while researching the prospect of a new settlement if Members are in the end going to back away from it. The weakness in putting that to the vote now is that if Members vote “No” at this stage of the process, the council will very likely be pursued through the courts with claims that the decision was taken with no evidence to support it; simply a decision based on political prejudice and opportunism. Officers made that point at Tuesday’s public working group.
So it seems to me that forcing a decision now is (i) a waste of everyone’s time and (ii) a risky proposal in which their is no real choice.
There must be better things in which to spend one’s time than attending “no choice” meetings.
I would take serious issue with Geoff on his assertion that UDC officers are well qualified professionals. How could well qualified professionals considered it sensible and reasonable to put the last draft local plan in front of an inspector when it was obviously defective?
Also, I as a lay person, defended a number of planning appeals successfully where officers had blithely recommended that said applications be approved.
……It troubles me that our so called ‘professionals’ identify no conflict of interest between A Taylor signing off on a s106 relating to a large Barratts application in the meantime (probably the largest in the district but who’s counting)
Far from being well qualified professionals, I consider the officers at UDC, particularly the management team and the systemic disgrace that passes for a planning department to be part of the problem, when the district is crying out for solutions.