Overturning a Planning Recommendation

As I mentioned yesterday, I went to a planning committee meeting last night, and we did something we seldom do: overturned officers' recommendation.

To explain, each planning application before the committee has a recommendation from the planning department to approve, refuse or defer. Residents often regard the Planning Committee's usual course of following this recommendation as making it into a kind of rubber stamp, but I would argue it is more complicated than that. One shouldn't treat the number of officer recommendations overturned as some sort of virility symbol.

Firstly, whereas the Committee is certainly influenced by officers, the opposite is also true. Officers are working within a policy framework set by the Committee. I admit that some of the Committee members seem to disagree with the policy framework, but make no effort to change it, so they have only themselves to blame. Also, when the Committee overturns recommendations, officers adjust their recommendations on future cases. A while ago we started having controversies over back garden extensions, and in a couple of cases we overturned recommendations. As a result, the officers showed greater care over similar applications on future occasions.

Another reason that residents are sometimes disenchanted with the Planning System is that many things lie outside it. It can't really be used to control anti-social behaviour for example. Nor can the Planning Committee consider things outside its legal framework, like houseprices. This can mean that the residents regard an application as obviously wrong, but the Planning Committee don't refuse it because there are no planning grounds to do so.