| Topic: | Application reveals Council's Unsatisfactory Procedures | |
| Posted by: | Victor Mishiku | |
| Date/Time: | 04/04/13 14:16:00 |
| As you have read, the householder planning application made by Dr Onkar Singh Sahota of 19 Thorncliffe Road, Southall (applied for in the name of Dr Sahota Onkar as resident of 43 Castlebar Road, Ealing) was refused 10 votes to Nil (with 3 abstentions). The draft Minutes of the Planning Committee Meeting were published shortly after the night of the Meeting but they contained errors and omissions. The Minutes have now been partially corrected. The Decision Notice was prepared 6 days after the night of the Meeting and the Reasons for Refusal outlined by councillors have been modified by the Planning Department it seems removing one of the matters complained of by various councillors as to the "overbearing nature and impact on the neighbouring property" of the proposed development. Neighbours have written in to the Council but whilst the Minutes were revised, the omission of the refusal ground mentioned above has not been remedied. In addition to the above, the publishing of agreed Council Minutes is, in my opinion, unsatisfactory and defective. In this case, the draft Minutes were posted on the Council's Website a few days after the Committee Meeting (which was on 13th March). We objected to these on two grounds. At the Planning Committee last night (3rd April), a somehat differently-constituted Committee was asked to agree a correction to one of the paragraphs in the draft Minutes of the previous Meeting (13th March) - which the Committee did. I therefore checked the Council's Website today expecting to see and to be able to download the final Agreed Minutes (as agreed last night). I was quite surprised to be told that the Council's Agreed Procedure is to leave the "draft Minutes" on the Website and expect people to scour the Website for possible modifications in twice-removed future Agendas and to then read these in conjunction with the wrong Minutes. I have written to the Council about this but they are insistent that the incorrect "draft Minutes" are the only full Minutes that are going to be available on the Web. It just does not make sense - supposing the Decision Notice contained an error and put the wrong address for instance, would the Council leave it all wrong up on the Web? I think not. The planning case officer always writes a "draft report" to Committee and this then gets altered by a manager - the only report that the Council put up on the Web is the final revised version. My second letter to the Council today can be seen at the link below: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14377445/LettertoCouncil.re.Minutes_4thApr2013doc.doc My third letter to the Council can be seen at: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14377445/ThirdLetter_4.4.2013.doc I will refer to the Decision Notice and the omission from it in another separate posting to follow. |