Andy Cooper (Hi Andy!), the former Councillor and wannabe MP, we have on good local authority, missed a wrist slapping from Tamworth Borough Council planning officers last night. Why a wrist slapping? Because that lovely looking building that was our town police station was going to be turned into flats. Andy Cooper who was on the committee that 5th of December evening in 2023, went against officer recommendations and moved refusal of the plans that you can see here. He was eagerly backed up and seconded by Former air headed Councillor Peter Thurgood.
So what, you might think. Who cares what happens to the old police station? After all we know that Sarah Edwards our MP promised during the election campaigns that Tamworth will definitely be getting a public facing police desk. We shall believe that when we see it of course. Well as it happens we should as taxpayers care about this application being refused, because the refusal by the committee led the applicant Tommac Building Services Limited to appeal the decision with the Planning Inspectorate. The Inspector took a very dim view on the refusal and upheld the appeal. They also awarded costs against the council of £15,000.
The reasons given by the committee for refusal were:
- Shortfall in parking spaces
- Shortfall in internal space standards of some of the apartments
- Shortfall of open space and outside areas
- Compliance of housing mix not meeting standards
Which were all not good enough for the Inspector, leading them to the conclusion:
The proposed development would accord with the development plan as a whole and there are no other considerations that indicate that I should take a different decision other than in accordance with this. I conclude that the appeal should be allowed.
In the costs decision, the Inspector went even further:
These factors constitute unreasonable behaviour and has resulted in the applicant having to provide evidence by pursuing this appeal and thereby incurring unnecessary and wasted expense. For the reasons given above, unreasonable behaviour resulting in unnecessary or wasted expense has occurred and a full award of costs is therefore warranted.
If you want to see the nitty gritty of the officers slap down to Councillors who go against their decisions, you can go here.
It must be noted that Councillors aren’t actually experts in planning, there are professional officers who do that bit. Granted those officers don’t necessarily have the investment in the town that local people do, often living miles away from it. Unfortunately residents expect their local Councillors to be able to halt what they think are dodgy planning applications in their tracks, especially mobile phone masts which they actually have jack all influence over at all other than as a ‘consultee’. Not even the Council can stop those. Effectively, unless Councillors spot something that Council planners missed, that is a material and legal reason for refusing it, or have a degree in planning to back up their reasoning then they should pass it. As a planning committee, they should be neutral and not have made up their minds beforehand. Something Councillor Richard Kingstone is actually adept at ignoring, making him completely useless as a member of the planning committee for the sake of one of his popularity Facebook posts.
Councillors we understand have more than ample time to speak to planners before an application comes to committee. They don’t have to of course. To us at Debunking, this particular refusal smacks of decisions being made on the spot without much thought, which has ended up costing you the tax payer some fifteen thousand of your cash. We also don’t have much faith in a planning system, or see the point in planning committees that effectively have to rubber stamp everything through since by their circumstances, they don’t have the expertise to do otherwise.
