False claims made by former councillor
Damascene conversions are always a pleasure and a revelation, so it was particularly pleasing to see former councillor Bob Goodman embracing his green credentials in these pages (17 September).
Unfortunately, his enthusiasm for the green cause was diminished by the inaccuracies in his letter and the fact that the Englishcombe Lane development he mentioned was started by the previous Conservative administration.
As cabinet member for Planning, why didn’t he intervene back then? Indeed, this site has been listed for development in Local Plans since 2007 - he had plenty of opportunity to pull the plug.
The current Liberal Democrat administration has had to deal with these and other ‘presents’ left in our laps by the Conservatives.
Wherever possible we have tried to instil sound policy principles, such as the Climate and Ecological Emergency declarations, which direct the way the council now deals with these matters.
We will continue to use these principles as the basis for policy review across all areas of council activity.
The planning regime ties local authorities’ hands in many ways and is very slow to change, due to the need to follow due process.
In the meantime the council is still required by law to implement the current Local Plan which is outdated in a number of areas.
It is disingenuous of Mr Goodman, to put it kindly, to suggest that members of the current cabinet could legally have intervened in this case.
The Local Plan did not permit the application to be rejected on ecological grounds, much as we would have liked to.
Mr Goodman’s letter also erroneously claims that there is no social housing on the site. In fact, there will be 14 such units, so 14