Planning Matters
Planning Matters
Spelthorne's Planning Committee has met 15 times since it was last appointed in May last year. Since then….
- One Conservative member (£3,900 p.a. allowances) has attended just one meeting
- Another Conservative member (£3,900 p.a. allowances) has not attended one meeting
- The Council's Conservative Leader John Packman admits he's been unable to do anything about the situation.
Does it matter?
Few things a Borough Council does are as important to residents as Planning.
But Planning is not something that Spelthorne has been very good at:
-
It has consistently set unnecessarily high targets for house-build, making Spelthorne an over-attractive area for developers.
-
After a series of critical questions by the Lib Dem Group at Council, the Conservative leadership finally last year called in consultants. They took months over their review, and came up with 270 recommendations for reform. No real surprise there. Too often, local planners have been weak in resisting the ambitions of the developers, big or small: take the plans by Linden Homes for the sensitive Environment Agency riverside site in Lower Sunbury: recommended by the planners, turned down by the committee, appeal dismissed by the inspector: take 72 The Avenue: Originally recommended by the planners, turned down (after a battle) in committee, appeal dismissed.;
-
Several developers have failed to stick to the plans agreed, Council planners had no proper monitoring scheme in place, so Lib Dem councillors have been doing the job for them, to get developers to stick to the rules.
-
Several Surrey boroughs are cooperating with the County Council and receiving millions of pounds a year from small scale developers to pay for infrastructure improvements. Spelthorne conservatives turned down Lib Dem proposals for a similar scheme. In fact, when asked why not, the then chairman of the Planning committee boasted that Spelthorne had already received over two million pounds anyway. But that was for large-scale developments (s106 agreements). And what had happened to those millions? Well, more than half remained unspent, some for more than ten years. Thanks to that consultants' review, regular reports are now being made on what's happening to this 106 money - and they reveal a sorry tale of mix-up, muddle, apathy and confusion between conservative-run Spelthorne Council and conservative-run Surrey County Council.