Martock Inquiry abandoned
A planning application for 120 houses at Coat Road, Martock was due to be heard tomorrow. This followed the controversial fashion in which the Regulation Committee of South Somerset District Council approved the application.
Martock Parish Council had been considering a Judicial Review of the decision.
The application is to build on land which regularly floods and locals have warned is inappropriate for development.
The Planning Inspectorate were due to hold an Inquiry tomorrow (4th February) at Brympton Way, Yeovil. The Leveller understands that Barratts have withdrawn an appeal against an initial refusal of permission.
Today a letter from the Planning Inspectorate case officer Helen Skinner noted only that “following the withdrawing (of) the above appeal, the inquiry arranged for 04 February 2020 has been cancelled. Please tell anyone you informed of the arrangements about the cancellation. I recommend that a notice of the cancellation is displayed at the inquiry venue. If you have displayed a notice of the arrangements at the appeal site, please overwrite the notice.”
We will keep you posted of any further developments.
This was an appeal by Barratts against the previous decision to turn down the application.
In the meantime and in true fashion Barratts then submitted a new application which was all but identical.
SSDC (or should I say the Liberals) were so frightened of having their decision making capabilities taken away from them should they lose the appeal (see line 1), that they carried out a three line whip on those coerced onto the regulation committee to hear the ‘new application’ (see line 2).
No surprise that went through, following the farcical meeting when they might as well have had the vote right at the beginning, because they weren’t going to listen to the evidence and speakers. That would be the same if not better objections to the previous identical application which they accepted and turned down!
I think the political phrase of ‘Not fit for purpose’ should be levied against the LD run SSDC