Plan 9 from outer space
New Labour planning decisions are off this planet
Recent planning decisions by local New Labour councillors have raised a few eyebrows with planning officers and IWCA members alike. The most high profile of these dubious decisions has been the recent refusal of planning permission for retail units on Botley Road.
The council’s full-time Planning Officer, who is paid to give impartial professional advice on planning law, said that if the council blocked this application the decision is likely to be overturned in court. As a result the council stands to lose around £100,000 paid in compensation to the applicant.
A sizeable delegation of residents from the new town houses on Botley Road turned up at the council meeting where the decision was to be made. New Labour councillors presumably felt it was their duty to play to the public gallery as they clamoured to outdo each other with emotive speeches about their responsibility to defend ‘the people’.
IWCA councillor Stuart Craft stayed well out of it and abstained on the vote since he wasn’t elected to support either big business or the yuppie NIMBYs of West Oxford.
Remarkably, after the New Labour councillors rejected the application they couldn’t actually make up their minds on which grounds they would be opposing it in court. If they are unable to come up with a watertight objection then they will be almost certain to lose. If this happens then money to pay for the hefty compensation claim will have to come from somewhere. As a Councillor on the Liberal Democrat benches argued, it is likely to come from the budgets of the ‘poorer areas of the city’.
The New Labour councillors appear to see nothing wrong with their decision to appease a middle class lobbying group even though this folly is likely to be bankrolled by their constituents on the working class estates of East Oxford. In fact the whole fiasco is further evidence, if any were needed, of where and with whom New Labour’s priorities lie.
If the councillors were doing their job properly they would pay close attention to planning decisions and be aware of the legal consequences of their actions. As it is, working class people in Oxford will end up paying the price of New Labour’s incompetence in the city.
Leys Independent, issue 15, September 2002
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