22 August - It’s a little bit odd
Downloading
and perusing every Planning Committee Agenda since January 2015 is not a
sensible way to spend a sunny Saturday but I was wondering if former Planning
Committee members, Brian and Christine Bishop, so
often photographed with a certain Sikh family which runs a succesful building business, ever emulated former Councillor Geraldene
Lucia-Hennis by debating a planning issue in which
they had an undeclared interest; and Geraldene was censured for it.
Both man and wife were on the Planning Committee for a long time and no one knows how their presence at
the Shaheedi Jor Mela a week ago was justified.
Rumour has it that there was no Council backed invitation.
However the Agenda search revealed nothing quite so blatant as with the former
Councillor Lucia-Hennis.
I checked every address in the Index of Mr. Singh related things, 178 Bexley
Road, 2 West Heath, 95 Woolwich Road, 238/240 Woolwich Road and of course the
Leather Bottle on Heron Hill but only two of those addresses showed up in twelve
years’ worth of Agendas, This is
strange because the aforesaid Index refers to relevant planning applications 30
times. Some will be referrals back but even so , that is a huge discrepancy.
Could it be that some applications were passed without going before the
Committee? But the narrative indicates that many rejections, appeals, enforcement notices and
resubmissions were the norm. One might think there would be more than two Agenda mentions. Very strange.
Planning meetings are very frequent because applicants cannot be made to wait
during holiday times etc.. At least one a month might be considered the norm
but the Council’s database shows many months missed, sometimes two months.
Surely Bexley Council wouldn’t delete Agendas to cover something,
would they? But it is known to occasionally lose embarrassing Agendas and Minutes; the Maxine Fothergill
business for example. All that has gone.
Would Bexley Council stoop that low on planning? One of the Woolwich Road
Agendas refers back to an earlier Committee refusal along with the date of the relevant meeting, but
there is simply no record of that meeting. Where did it go? What did it say?