Planning Committee: Lib Dems seek immediate improvement

The Lib Dem Group on Brentwood Borough Council have called on the Leader Cllr Louise McKinlay to ensure that the Chairs of the various Committee's are properly trained and are able to do their roles following another very difficult planning meeting last week (23/5/12).

The meeting which started at 7pm and eventually finished at 11.45pm with a number of items deferred, left many councillors and members of the public shaking their heads in disbelief at the way decisions were taken and the way the meeting was run. The Chairman Cllr Roger McCheyne seemed to lack a basic understanding of Council standing orders and planning procedures and at times the meeting descended into a farce.

Following the meeting Lib Dem Leader Cllr David Kendall called on the Cllr McKinlay to ensure that the Planning Committee Chairman was given a crash course training programme to bring him up to the level required and said that all members of the planning committee should be given adequate training to ensure they were properly equiped to do the role.

He said:

"This latest planning meeting was one of the worst have attended during my 21 years on the Borough Council. The way the meeting was conducted and the way some of the decisions were made was embarrassing and did not show the Council in a good light. Our local residents quite rightly expect the Chair of the Planning Committee and the members of the Committee to have a good understanding of planning law and the planning process. Hopefully our call for more training will be listened to and we will start to see some improvments. If we don't see a dramatic improvment we will have to seriously consider what other options are open to us".