Democracy in the planning system is being crushed as ”unelected bureaucrats” attempt to overrule decisions taken by local councillors, it has been claimed.
Fife councillor Mike Scott-Hayward said local democracy had been ”turned on its head” after planning officials refused to accept a committee’s decision to approve plans for housing near St Andrews.
There was anger in September when planning chiefs urged elected members sitting on the North East Fife area committee to throw out plans for 15 homes near Lathockar partly due to the presence on the site of a single red squirrel.
A report put before councillors had stated that the application should be refused because the local red squirrel population described as standing at one could ”possibly become extinct”.
Despite the recommendation, councillors eventually voted to approve the application, with Mr Scott-Hayward saying: ”One red squirrel should not stand in the way of mankind’s march of progress.”
However, the unelected officials have not taken the snub lying down, and have issued a fresh report urging refusal. Instead of it going to the North East Fife area committee which meets in Cupar and is composed entirely of local elected members, the new document has been referred to the wider planning committee, based in Glenrothes.
The attempt to once again block the application has infuriated Mr Scott-Hayward.
”This really is a case of local democracy being turned on its head,” he said. ”Councillors are local people elected by the public to take decisions on their behalf. Yet here we have a system, proposed and established by the administration, giving unelected individual officers the power to tell a local committee that they are out of order.”
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”The elected mandate of the local committee is to be ignored, with the officer having the power over one set of councillors to take a matter to another set of councillors. The councillors who will now decide the application represent wards distant from the site.”
Mr Scott-Hayward branded the situation ”appalling”.
”We are now ruled by bureaucrats,” he continued. ”It will thus fall to the public to make their views evident. Increasingly, as elected democracy is crushed, the electorate has to resort to protest and demonstration.”
The application for the new houses had been approved after members of the North East Fife area committee voted in favour by eight to five.
A fresh report prepared for Fife Council’s planning committee notes that previous concerns lodged by Scottish Natural Heritage have now been withdrawn. However, it still states the application should be refused.
”This application was previously considered by members at the North East Fife area committee meeting on September 21,” it notes. ”The officers’ report recommended the application for refusal … and members adopted the position that the application should be approved.
”In these circumstances members were advised that the head of enterprise, planning and protective services would refer the application to Fife Council planning committee for determination, since the application was contrary to the development plan and the area committee was minded to determine the application contrary to the officer recommendation.”
Despite the wishes previously expressed by local members, the report goes on to urge the planning committee to refuse the application.
”The proposal does not comply with the spatial strategy of the development plan and as such the principle of a development of this nature is not supported,” it concludes.