Triple fault for local politician in tennis row
● No love lost as third councillor reprimanded over club’s netting bid
A third Midlothian councillor has been sanctioned over his involvement in a planning application to put netting up at a tennis club.
SNP councillor Colin Cassidy was hauled before the Standards Commission over allegations he failed to declare a friendship with objectors to the plan.
The case against him followed two fellow members of the local authority’s planning committee being suspended from it for a month after claims of bias from opponents.
Complaints were made after Dalkeith Lawn Tennis Club applied for planning permission to put netting up as screening on top of a fence at its complex of courts.
Although the application was approved by the planning committee in April last year, a condition was imposed which forced the club to remove part of the netting – which had been put up ahead of permission being granted – and replace it with a lighter mesh.
It followed debate over the impact of the heavier netting on a nearby resident whose garden was overlooked by it.
In May, the Standards Commission ruled that Labour councillors Margot Russell and John Hackett, who took part in the meeting, had breached statutes set out in their code of conduct.
Both councillors attended a hearing in May after they were accused of bias because they had visited the home of the resident whose garden was affected ahead of the planning committee meeting.
The Standards Commission ruled that, while they had not acted in an unfair manner, they had breached the code by acting in a manner which would have “given an appearance of unfairness and bias towards one of the parties”.
They were suspended from taking their places on the planning committee for a period of one month following the hearing. Mr Cassidy, who also sits on the planning committee, was accused of failing to declare an alleged friendship with a local resident – former Masterchef winner Gerry Goldwyre – who objected to the planning application ahead of the meeting.
He did not take part in a site visit, but it was claimed his friendship could be considered “sufficiently significant” as to affect his decisionmaking responsibilities in the case.
Following a hearing yesterday, the Standards Commission ruled that Mr Cassidy had indeed been in breach of the code of conduct and censured him. A censure by the Standards Commission is the lower end of the scale of action following a breach and “is a formal recording of the Standards Commission’s severe and public disapproval”.