Reference to the article below appeared in the 'Newspaper Round-up' highlighted in yesterday's e 'Planning Daily'.
(Thanks to an APT contact for sending me a link to the Newspaper.)
'Councillors for hire who give firms planning advice'
Extracts
"Councillors across the country are offering themselves for hire to property developers who are hoping to take advantage of relaxed planning laws which come into effect within weeks, a Daily Telegraph investigation reveals on Monday...The Daily Telegraph’s investigation also looked at the activities of Indigo Public Affairs, a lobbying company, with offices in London, Newcastle and Manchester...Richard Patient, the managing director of Indigo Public Affairs, said: “In common with most businesses, it is not company policy to make our staff list available to the public... He added that Indigo’s code of conduct met or exceeded all legislative and regulatory requirements and “prohibits all members of staff who are serving councillors from working on any planning applications in their own local authority area”. Statement from Indigo Public Affairs
Today's 'Planning Daily' top Story is 'Devon Councillor suspended after planning consultancy sting'
There is also an item on the BBC here
We have just had our planning application refused basically because we live opposite a councillor and all of our councillors seem to stick together.
ReplyDeleteWe had to divide our application into three parts and we were awarded full costs last year regarding one part and the other was reluctantly permitted weeks later than it should have been.
The councillor interfered with the application days after the Standards Board was dissolved and consequently we were told that it was not in the public interest to pursue a decision of our complaint, by the monitoring officer, as he had agreed to retraining.
We are now forced to take the resubmission to appeal and apply for costs again.