A MIDSOMER Norton councillor has warned that new national planning rules will make it harder for residents to be heard on controversial developments.
Independent member for Midsomer Norton North on Bath and North East Somerset Council, Cllr Shaun Hughes, raised his concerns about the new National Scheme of Delegation at his monthly residents' meeting at Welton Rovers.
His warning comes as the draft B&NES Local Plan is out to public consultation with the B&NES's housing targets nearly doubled by the Labour government from around 14,500 homes to more than 27,000.
Most planning applications are decided by council officers with the scheme of delegation setting out which should go to the planning committee, where councillors can debate them in public and residents can ask questions.
He warns that B&NES is now having to adopt a new national version, making it far harder for applications to reach committee.
“Under these new rules, unless the head of planning and the committee chair both agree, we as local councillors won't even be able to bring a controversial application to a committee,” said Cllr Hughes, who sits on the council's planning committee.
He called the change “yet another attempt by central government to strip away the checks and balances we've built up over decades - the very tools we use to protect our local communities from inappropriate development.”
“By pushing almost every decision onto planning officers and severely cutting back on member call-ins and community objections, Westminster is taking away our local democratic voice,” he added.
An example from Cllr Tim Warren (Midsomer Norton Redfield), who also sits on the planning committee, is the housing application at Haydon. Refused by the planning committee as unsustainable, if it comes back, he suggested it would probably never return to committee under the new rules because “it's not big enough”.
Cllr Hughes agrees that is a real possibility. He said the changes were part of a wider national policy that has brought in the “grey belt”, stripped away five-year land supply protections and doubled housing targets on paper.
“The changes completely ignore the reality of how housebuilding actually works,” he explained.
“Developers don't build homes they can't sell, and historically in Bath and North East Somerset that market rate sits around 720 homes a year. Doubling a target on a piece of paper won't magically build houses faster.
“All it actually does is open the floodgates for speculative development in the wrong places, with zero regard for local infrastructure or community impact.”
Several residents at the meeting said they felt their objections were routinely ignored; Cllr Hughes urged them not to give up.
With fewer applications likely to reach committee, he said, the consultation on the council's draft Local Plan is one of the best chances residents will have to influence where homes are built.
He has offered to help anyone preparing a response to the public consultation with an invitation to drop in to his office.
The B&NES public consultation closes on Friday, October 30.