“EDDC Chief Executive Mark Williams was bluntly told by a Tory councillor to get a grip on his planning department’s “unacceptable level of performance”.
The barb came from Cllr Mike Allen at today’s Development Management Committee which was given a “progress” report on the Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) which Planning Inspector Anthony Thickett ordered the Council to conduct following his rejection of the Local Plan earlier this year. Originally it was supposed to be completed in June
Several other councillors were angry that the assessment of how many houses the district needs was proceeding at snail’s pace, and will not be ready until next year, implying that the Local Plan cannot be re-submitted until after the 2015 Local Elections.
Independent councillor Ben Ingham said EDDC “lacked a coherent strategy and a timetable for completion” of this crucial research. As a result with no Local Plan in place, it was “open season in the Devon countryside” for developers. He concluded, “It’s a shame that this work was not tackled three years ago.”
The obedient, loyal majority of DMC members were acutely embarrassed by all this, and rapidly passed Sidmouth councillor Peter Sullivan’s motion to “move on”!
PS. Mike Allen has been unflattering before about Mark Williams who was his boss when Allen was a senior officer at South Somerset District Council. At last Summer’s full Council Meeting which discussed the Local Plan, the councillor for Honiton said Williams didn’t understand the National Planning Policy Framework! As a former chair of the Local Plan Panel he speaks with some authority.
East Devon Watch 
In my mind, a vote to “note the report” is nothing more than a wringing of hands and a disclaimer of responsibility.
I presume that since the report was made to DMC, that DMC is the council committee that is the vehicle for councillors to be responsible for, and be accountable for, the activities of the officers of the Planning Policy Unit. (Let’s not forget that it is the councillors who are ultimately responsible for the performance of the council, not the officers – even Mark Williams senior though he is.)
Noting the report for the record, without providing any direction, additional resources, or either support for or criticism of the Policy Planning Unit, appears to indicate that DMC do not feel responsible for the Local Plan or for the success or failure of the Planning Policy Unit.
I do appreciate that the bulk of the DMC work is handling the raft of individual planning applications, and so it may be easy for the members to lose sight of the fact that they are also the committee responsible for Planning Policy. However, one would have hoped that in the aftermath of the Graham Brown controversy, the DMC would have made extra effort to take back responsibility for Planning Policy from the defunct Local Development Forum which was handling Planning Policy (possibly illegally since Planning Policy needs to be accountable to a committee and the LDF was neither a committee in its own right nor a sub-committee of DMC).
So, in other words, yet another disgrace!! (Disgraceful behaviour from councillors on a small number of vitally important matters appears to becoming the norm these days, sadly overshadowing the good work done by these same councillors on the much larger but less controversial day-to-day workload.)
I have previously commented elsewhere on my respect for Mike Allen (for bucking his party line and speaking / voting against the public speaking restrictions), and again I respect his stand on this occasion for saying it how he sees it and for attempting to hold the Chief Executive to account.
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