CONCERNS expressed in the Bolton News about the independence and scope of the proposed planning inquiry are well-founded.

Councillors are not alone in having an impact on the success of a planning application and should not be singled out for scrutiny. Up to five distinct groups of players have a role. An investigation into why the planning process in Bolton is perceived so negatively cannot be restricted to only one of the five, especially when how they operate involves a variety of interactions.

Outside the council, the players are the applicant and/or his agent, the statutory bodies and the general public. Inside the council, the input is from council officers, including those in highways and environment as well as planning officers.

Well before an application is published it can be worked up by the applicant and the officers in pre-application discussions. The result can be a comprehensive mass of detailed documents which could take hours to unravel. The planners know what is on offer; they have been involved in its creation. In contrast, the public is playing catch-up with limited time in which to do so and make comments – applicants can and do object if the council drags its feet.

Once the time limit for public input has expired, the planning officer in charge produces the Officer’s Report, an assessment of the merits, or otherwise, of the application. Anyone who attends planning committee meetings will have seen the inch-thick wad of officer’s reports supplied to councillors.

These officer’s reports are crucial. It is impossible for a councillor to search through all the documents relating to all applications in the bundle for a planning committee to determine whether or not they come to the same conclusion as the officers. They have to rely on the officer’s report more so now as the council no longer publishes objection letters on its website.

The planning system can be gamed by applicants. I hesitate to create a rogues’ manual by listing the twelve categories I see used, but one notorious strategy is already well-known, that of ‘Build First; Apply Later’.

Inexplicably, Bolton Council often chooses to avoid the correct action of enforcement to remove an unauthorised development. Instead, officers recommend retrospective approval. Councillors routinely bemoan the situation, but often approve the wrongdoing. Those disadvantaged by this are both the righteous applicants who pay over the odds to play by the rules and also neighbours whose home and garden suffer from an intrusive development which would have struggled to get approval if submitted by the correct procedure.

This is clearly wrong, yet nothing changes. An increasing number of the disadvantaged would like to understand why they have drawn a short straw in Bolton’s planning ‘system’.

Retrospective approval is an abuse where a line can easily be drawn by executive action. The failure of both councillors and the officers to address it provides an example of why an investigation of the system, not just the role of councillors, is needed.

Restricting an inquiry just to councillors’ actions is inadequate. Although they are significant players they do not act alone. Sometimes they have no role at all in a decision. Developments determined under delegated powers do not even reach the planning committee. Neither do non-material amendments.

Like football, the planning system is a team game. Do we assess the England team by looking only at the performance of the goalkeeper or do we look at the whole of the team and its manager?

Dr M M F Collier

Lostock Residents' Group