In the absence of an AV record, which there should be -all public meetings should be recorded, you can request the hand-written notes of the clerk in attendance. I did, in the case of a planning committee meeting where the application under discussion was was quite outrageous. I received the written notes within a couple of days. These contemporaneous minutes were extensive and thorough and listed 5 different reasons why the councillors had rejected the application.By the time the written Decision Notice for Refusal was published, those 5 reasons had shrunk to one under the editing process of planning services who were tasked with writing the refusal notice on a development that they had so heartily endorsed. Planning Committee councillors can act quite successfully, if left to their own devices, as a system of checks and balances against a planning department that has now come out publicly, in black and white, saying that building in back gardens and small infill spaces is recommended policy in this beautiful, leafy borough.Mr. Noel Rutherford, head of Built Environment in LBE, has stated that house building in the borough is at a premium and the LA is just following directives from the Mayor's office. Ironically the housing in question in W5 , to be built in the garden of a housing association block, is to be sold on the private market, and Mr. Rutherford appeared not to know this initially. When challenged he retorted that Raglan Housing were selling off their better stock in order to consolidate resources and start new building in other boroughs and parts of the south east. Is he not supposed to be protecting social housing in his own borough?Dickens yard did the same thing and got out of having to provide any affordable housing, whilst promising money for building elsewhere. Everyone is cashing in on the rocketing prices of private property in Ealing, so watch out for plenty more applications to shoehorn houses into gardens and access roads and spaces.I wonder what has happened to the government directive, recently iterated, that gardens, parks and fields were now off-limit for development, and that attention should focus on brownfield sites, of which there are many in London. LBE is quite openly and shockingly flouting these rules. Unfortunately some of the planning councillors - how shall I put it -don't seem to "understand" these issues, or that they can object to an application even if it is pushed by the planners and supported by other councillors from their own party. Applications should be decided solely on planning considerations, and if a committee member does not understand planning procedure nor planning law, they are left to the mercies of Planning Services, surely the most loathed department in LBE.
Judith Jaafar ● 4337d