Radstock Town Council has been criticised at failing to flag a planning application before it was approved by a B&NES officer, bypassing the local authority’s Development Control Committee. Ward Councillors are able to ask for an application to be heard in front of the committee, but angry residents asked on Monday evening why a development for 26 homes had been approved, seemingly unnoticed.

The derelict yard on Bath Old Road, Radstock, will now be built upon, including eight affordable homes. £33,943 will come from the development as S106 payments; £8,943 for the construction and maintenance of allotments at the Trinity Allotment site, and £25,000 for a play improvement project at Woodborough Road, Radstock.

It would seem that Peasedown St John Parish Council received the application to comment upon instead, leaving Radstock only informed by B&NES that it had been passed.

Addressing an angry resident asking why this had happened, Cllr Chris Dando said: “We need to make sure that there is a process in place to pick it up next time, so that it doesn’t happen again. It is incumbent on all of us to be more vigilant, spot the applications and ask the Clerk that they appear on the planning agenda.

“We receive a weekly list of applications, and there can be up to fifty, but this one was assigned to the wrong parish. It was a human error.”

The resident replied: “There are now going to be 26 new homes, with at least two people per house and two cars; this application is totally unsuitable. We now have to put up with it, because of pure human error. I think it is disgusting.”

Cllr Chris Dando added: “We are not the planning authority. We do not have a veto on applications. Our comments and other objections went in, but the planning officer, in her professional opinion, did not see the comments outweighing the benefits of the application.

“This Council has complained endlessly that B&NES do not take our comments seriously. What we will do, going forward, is to make sure our local plans are more robust, to make clear what is unacceptable.

“There are forty-to-fifty planning applications per week on the list, and you cannot have all of them going to committee. The vast majority are delegated to officers with their professional training and expertise.

“The challenge is what gets delegated, to ask for them to be called in to committee. We all missed that. It’s a learning curve, and we cannot go back and re-write history.”

The other Bidwell Metals application, which had been recalled to the Guildhall last Wednesday, has been refused.

The application on Chapel Road, Clandown, for 28 new homes, had originally been permitted in August 2017, but officers brought it back to committee after S106 obligations had failed to be agreed. These included a new community building for the area, as part of the proposed development.