For the personal attention of:
Chief Executive Stroud District Council
Council Offices
Ebley Mill
Westward Road
Stroud GL5 4TY                                                                    4th August 2006

Dear Sir,

Complaints against Stroud District Council – failure to comply with the requirements of the Town and Country Planning Act - S.05/1043/OUT

Thank you for your letter of the 25^th July in response to my complaints regarding SDC’s handling of the above application.

I am very disappointed with your response mainly because you have completely failed to address the evidence I provided in support of my complaints. For this reason I am preparing a request to the Ombudsman to investigate my complaints as there seems little point continuing in this forum. I am, however, aware that before making such reference, one should have exhausted all other avenues with the Council concerned. To this end I have, therefore, made a detailed response to your letter below on which you may choose to comment.

I note that Mr. Wyatt investigated my complaints on your behalf. My response to the results of these investigations are as follows:

1. The independent consultant’s report

You say that the independent consultant’s report “was available” to Members who “were able” to satisfy themselves as to the justification for the nature and size of the proposed development. Whilst I understand that a copy of this report was forwarded to each Member it is, of course, also the case that the wealth of other documentation is also available in the working file. Members tell me that workload rarely allows close scrutiny of applications and much reliance is reluctantly but necessarily placed on SDC officers to provide accurate summaries of applications and relevant policies. I am sure this is correct.

2. The size of the dwelling

In the report of the investigation into my complaints, considerable emphasis is placed on the fact that the size of the dwelling was fully discussed by the democratically elected Members. I was not disputing this when I made my complaint; it is the advice that Members were given when considering the size of the building and the basis on which their decision was made that I have questioned.

In support of my case, I have referred you most clearly to the letter explaining the rationale behind the Member's decision from the Senior Planning Officer who had presented his recommendation to Members to permit the development. In that letter, he claims that the size of the building was "supported by various independent reports." In fact, the size of the proposed building was not supported by any reports, independent or otherwise (paragraph 4.8 of my complaints refers.) You have made no observation about this misunderstanding in your response to my complaints.

 3. Policy H18 and PPS7

 You claim that the committee’s decision is consistent with H18 and PPS7. I am not certain what this means. I have raised a number of issues concerning H18 and PPS7 and drawn attention to several aspects in paragraphs 4.1 to 4.9 and 5.1 to 5.4 of my complaint which were not considered by the committee and which you have failed to address.

 I would appreciate an explanation about why you appear to consider each of my supporting arguments in these two sections to be invalid.

 4. Alternative sites

My complaints were based not only on the documents to which I have referred specifically but also on many trawls through the working file, both before and after the decision was made by the Members. You suggest that the options of alternative sites were considered in detail although they were not set out in the report.

 There is absolutely no evidence in the working file to support this concept and I would appreciate your directing me to the notes or reports of the details that you say were considered.

 5. Your Conclusion

In your penultimate paragraph you say “the Development Control Committee … made its decision consistent with Council policy and national guidelines and its statutory obligations.”

 I am aware that a formal complaint was made to you, now over a month ago, that some Members, including the Chair of the Development Control Committee, were in breach of the Council’s protocol when reaching their decision on this very application and that your investigations into that complaint are incomplete. Unless the results of that investigation have been pre-judged, I fail to see how you can know that committee made its decision consistent with Council policy. I suggest that this requires explanation.

 You will appreciate from the above that I do not believe my complaints have been fully addressed as you suggest; indeed many have not been addressed at all. I also fail to understand how Mr Wyatt could find no evidence to support my claims when I have provided carefully presented, detailed evidence, all of which has been rejected without comment. I would appreciate the reasons for so doing.

 I also find it difficult not to conclude that the Senior Planning Officer, whose letter you have chosen to ignore, and Mr. Wyatt, who conducted your investigations, are referring to two different meetings. I note that Mr. Wyatt, however, was not present at the Development Control Committee meeting of September 2005 to which my complaints relate, and that his enquiries were initiated some 10 months after the meeting in question. Whilst some of the issues arise from the reports of people present at the meeting, most arise from the basis on which the Members made their decision as described by the Senior Planning Officer (North) in his letter of 2^nd December 2005, just 2½ months after the meeting at which he presented his report recommending permission for the application.

 I imagine that your committee Members would prefer their decisions to be based on accurate information, clear understandings of all aspects of relevant policy and detailed independent advice. It is regrettable that this does not seem to have been available to them in making their decision on this application.

 I remain

Yours faithfully