A Pembrokeshire councillor has withdrawn his call to scrap a planning panel after claims he was trying to “get one over” on it following a colleague’s suspension.
At Pembrokeshire County Council’s October 15 meeting, members were due to consider Councillor Huw Murphy’s motion to “consider disbanding the Planning Delegation Panel (PDP) and review the current arrangements so that planning applications delegated to officers for refusal, where a member requests further consideration, are referred directly to the planning committee rather than first being considered by the PDP.”
Cllr Murphy’s supporting statement said the extra stage “introduces unnecessary bureaucracy into the planning process, leading to increased delays and costs for applicants”.
“The current process can also be perceived as limiting democratic oversight, as applications may be refused by the panel without being considered by full planning committee, whose elected members bring local knowledge, experience, transparency and democratic accountability to planning decisions.”
The council’s constitutional review committee recommended rejecting the motion after hearing and debating it at its September meeting.
At the September meeting, Cllr Murphy suggested suspending the panel for 12 months to assess its usefulness.
A less than glorious recent incident in Pembrokeshire politics then became the centre of conversation for some committee members; the four-month suspension of Milford Haven county councillor Alan Dennison.
Mr Dennison, a fellow member of Cllr Murphy’s Independent Group, is suspended from the council until November 29 after breaching the members’ code of conduct, mainly over a previous Planning Delegation Panel matter.
Speaking at the September meeting, Cllr Rhys Jordan, who later moved to reject the motion, suggested it was “trying to get one over a decision that went a certain way that perhaps Cllr Murphy didn’t like”.
Cllr Joshua Beynon said he had never heard the public complain about the panel, later suggesting: “Perhaps a ‘certain councillor’ wouldn’t have been suspended if it wasn’t for the planning delegation panel.”
Cllr Murphy accused Cllr Jordan of “flying a kite” over his suggestions and said his proposal was “about increasing transparency.”
Ahead of the October debate, the council received a question from planning agent and former planning officer Andrew Vaughan-Harries, of Hayston Developments & Planning Ltd.
In his written question, Mr Vaughan-Harries called the recommendation to reject the motion “a missed opportunity to improve the transparency of the planning process for both the authority, for residents and developers, which I say with significant professional experience on planning in West Wales”.
He also said it was “disappointing to hear some councillors at the meeting of the CRC seemingly use it as a platform for point scoring rather than focus on the subject for debate, since planning is a matter of huge and significant importance for all of us”.
Later at the October meeting, Cllr Murphy withdrew his motion, saying he “fully respected the decision” of the committee.
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