More than ever
We take a look at the mushrooming of approved planning applications in South Somerset. Are Somerset Council making their deficit worse by building too many homes? Somerset Confidential® investigates.
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Andrew Lee - editor
Somerset may be run by the shiny and nearly new Somerset Council, but responsibility for planning decisions is split into four regions that exactly correspond with the old district councils. For instance Area South corresponds exactly with the old South Somerset District Council.
And in Area South they have been approving houses at a rate of knots. Not fast enough for some though.
One councillor on the Area South committee regularly takes to LinkedIn to lambast his colleagues for not approving planning applications. Especially when taking a decision at odds with council officers.
The councillor has a point. For starters if a decision is appealed, there will be a Planning Inquiry held by the Planning Inspectorate, a national body based in Bristol. If either party are considered to have a poor case, the cost of holding the appeal (which can be routinely in the region of £100,000) can be awarded against them by the Planning Inspector hosting the appeal.
And it is certainly true that the planning officers are the experts. So to go against the experts is risky for any council if they then lose an appeal. It enhances the risk of having costs awarded against them.
Appealing
Happily the latest figures for Area South’s planning performance, published on 17 March by Somerset Council, are positive. Far from turning down applications without justification, the figures suggest that when council decisions go to appeal, over 60% of them are won by the council.
As a rule of thumb, developers will only go to appeal if they feel they have a strong case. Because if they don’t, in the same way costs could end up being awarded against them.
Councillors on the Area South planning committee must be getting something right when they reject applications if they are winning over 60% of appeals.
But the idea of always following officer recommendations is surely flawed. It assumes that officers are never wrong and their decisions are always sound. And as with all human beings, that simply isn’t a realistic assumption.
officers are never wrong and their decisions are always sound
A recent case in Warminster showed the dangers of slavishly following officer recommendations.