Town council planning committee unhelpful

I SAT in on Newbury Town Council’s planning committee on Monday, March 29.

The town council isn’t the district planning authority so this committee is just a talking shop, but I was quite surprised at how sneery it all was.

One application for an extension on Glendale Avenue came in for particular mockery, with councillors having a good old laugh – one ward councillor suggesting that they needed to replace their architect.

Another applicant on Andover Road was ridiculed for calling their back porch a ‘mudroom’, and a third development provoked much harumphing for painting a door white.

However, I felt most sorry for the poor individuals who had turned up to address the committee in the mistaken belief that it had some authority to make decisions and that their effort would be worth the indignity of the experience.

The town council has a planning committee because town councillors like to imagine themselves in charge of planning applications, and if councillors had other interests they might similarly constitute committees for medical examinations or automotive mechanics where the public would attend in the similarly mistaken belief that the town council could diagnose their ills and repair their vehicles.

But just as those committees would be a humiliating waste of time and create unhelpful confusion about where the genuine service was delivered, so too is the town council’s planning committee, and its £100,000 running cost could be put to much better use.

SIMON KIRBY

Stuart Road

Wash Common