Shenanigans at Development Control B Committee
Normally committee meetings are very boring. And even when something somewhat interesting happens in one of them, they are still quite boring.
The Development Control B committee is no exception. The events of the 18th October 2023 are interesting, and yet still manage to be quite boring to watch.
The only item on the agenda was related to the building of the MetroBus road a decade ago, which saw yet more of Spike Island be covered by a road. As part of the approval for the MetroBus planning application, BCC set itself some conditions to replace trees that were removed, and to make Avon Crescent be a road that is safer for cyclists and pedestrians.
For reasons mostly known only to the Mayor, these conditions were never discharged as the replacement trees were never planted, and making Avon Crescent be a more pleasant and safer place for people to walk and cycle in never happened.
The officers in the meeting tried to argue that the road was being returned to 'how it was' before the MetroBus road was built, which ignores the facts that the 'new' cycle and footpath under Cumberland road is now being used by many people.
The committee voted unanimously to reject the proposal to remove the planning conditions, so Bristol Council will now have to re-submit plans that acceptably discharge those conditions in the original planning application.
The shenanigans
Councillor Poultney questioned the Chair and Simone Wilding, the senior planning officer present, very closely as to whether the committee could vote to refuse or whether they were required to vote to defer.
The officer tried to persuade the Councillors that the reasons for refusal needed to "come back the next time with worked up reasons for refusal" i.e. that a refusal decision could not be taken at the current committee meeting as the reasons need to be given to the officers to write up, before being confirmed at the next meeting.
The Councillors all agreed that they had been very clear in the meeting for the reasons for refusal, and the junior planning officer even helpfully said something along the lines of "you can just use the reasons why those conditions were added to the planning application in the first place as the reasons for refusal".
The meeting ended shortly after the unanimous vote of refusal took place.
An cut-down video of the relevant parts of the meeting is available here.
To understand why these shenanigans matter, you need to understand some of the Broadwalk scandal...
Broadwalk scandal
This is a short and vaguely accurate description of what has gone wrong with the Broadwalk planning application. Although the current Broadwalk shopping centre desperately needs to be redeveloped, the application for that includes a large number of very low quality housing (e.g. too small, and 'single aspect' also know as 'not having windows on two side') which looks very much like it would be a slum within a few years of being built.
The timeline below is of events at the Development Control A (DCA) committee.
31st May
The committee adopted a motion to refuse the planning application, and the refusal was unanimous.
5th July
The Chair of the Committee moved a motion to approve planning permission for the same application, reversing the previous decision, which was passed by four members voting for, four members voting against, and the chair using his deciding vote in favour.
Many people were really shocked by this. Not only was the motion to refuse at the 31st May meeting quite clear, members of the public had been led to believe there was no point for them to attend as the meeting was only to "confirm the wording for the reasons for refusing this application".
https://twitter.com/TristanCorkPost/status/1676673620456755221
People were also surprised that four members decided to change their vote, with no major changes being made to the planning application.
The minutes of the previous two meetings were not agreed at this meeting.
9th August
Councillor Ed Plowden says he will be resigning from the committee due to the events being so disreputable. Yet again, the minutes of the previous meetings are not agreed, due to ongoing disputes about what was said.
12th September
Mayor Rees and Councillor Eddy had a really odd interaction where they had obviously scripted the mayor's response to Councillor Eddy's question.
Mayor Rees:
As an organisation that should be committed to the good of Bristol and making sure that our departments are really facing outward to meet the needs of the city and not being subjected to political gaming, I agree.
I'm going to say something and it's hard to say it, Councillor Eddie, and it's even more hard because I don't think it's the second I don't think it's the first time I said it, but. Just to say to congratulate you on the way you've chaired planning Committee. And I did watch the video at the beginning of the summer as well, where you had to deal with a very theatrical moment that was less about the welfare of Bristol and more about leaflet material.
the further we can get away from political opportunism around the need to develop the city, the sooner we'll be able to really make sure that our planning officers full efforts are directed towards making sure that we get the scale and kind of development Bristol needs.
Councillor Eddy:
Could I impress the mayor one step further? Could I ask him his opinion of those who may respond with need your composition to development and regeneration and seek to actually misuse the member referral scheme to delay development?
Mayor Rees:
We've got quite a bit of that going on now, members, really. I would suggest misusing council processes to delay us meeting the needs of the city in the right way, and I think very dimly of it.
It was weird because it's so ham-fisted. No-one in the room would alter their behaviour because of it, so which audience was the mayor saying it for?
20th September
The chair of DCA committee brings a senior council lawyer to try to influence members to accept the inaccurate minutes. The chair also tried to prevent one of the members from voting on whether to accept the minutes.
Eventually Councillor Varney submits an amendment to the minutes that makes them acceptable to members (through making the minutes reflect what actually happened) and they formally voted as the minutes.
18th October
Councillor Tim Kent and other Knowle Liberal Democrats write 'quite' a letter to the Monitoring Officer drawing his attention to the probable unlawfulness of the 'decision taken' at the 5th of July meeting.
The Monitoring Officer has a personal public duty to report any decisions, actions, proposals or failures to act by the Council that would be unlawful. This report needs to be made to the Council, possibly at a Full Council meeting.
1st December, 2023 - The barrister for Broadwalk protestorswrites to Bristol Council to layout why BCC will lose a Judicial Review.
And provides a nice PDF that shows the timeline which presumably the barrister will be using as part of the Judicial Review.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZXZlK8Gj-NabuHu4yQiWt4ClDwoImoWx/view
So....why does the DCB on the 18th of October meeting matter?
Courts and other quasi-judicial decision makers do not like to try to parse and interpret the rules or constitutions of other organisations. They much prefer to look at precedent to determine what is and isn't allowed at that organisation.
By pushing through a clear vote of refusal (instead of deferring the decision until the next meeting) the DCB committee has set a clear precedent that refusal votes are allowed under Bristol City Council constitution.
The Judicial Review the campaigners are trying to bring against the terrible Broadwalk application has just become a lot easier. Instead of trying to walk a judge through the minutiae of Bristol City Council's constitution, they can just point at the events at the DCB committee on the 18th of October and say "the decision made on the 31st of May at DCA was a lawful decision".
What is going to happen next?
¯\(ツ)/¯
The Monitoring Officer will need to make a decision about how he is going to interpret the events that occurred. He's going to be under a huge amount of pressure from the interests that managed to persuade four councillors to change their mind between DCA planning meetings.
I think he'll either have to either say that the decision taken at DCA on the 5th July was unlawful, or he might try to persuade Councillors that the decision taken at DCB on the 18th of October was unlawful.
Either way, this is just not good enough governance.
The planning process and having well-thought through planning applications make a huge difference to how pleasant a city is to live in. Bristolians deserve better, and it's not surprising that the petition for "Loss of confidence in Bristol's planning system" has passed 3,500 signatures, which means it now needs to be brought before the Council.
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