A CONSERVATIVE councillor has criticised last week’s independent inquiry into Bolton Council’s planning committee — believing the review has ‘barely scraped the surface’.

The full findings of the Planning Advisory Service will not be published for three weeks, but The Bolton News reported yesterday that the review team did not find any evidence of corruption or inappropriate activity taking place within the committee.

But Cllr Bob Allen, who sits on the planning committee for the Tories, gave a scathing appraisal of the inquiry — blaming the Labour group for limiting it to what he called a ‘shallow investigation’.

He said: “First of all this was not an inquiry. An inquiry implies in-depth investigation and research.

“An inquiry might also have allowed more than a few days for public input and might have included confidential access to the inquiry panel for the public and council staff. This was a ‘peer challenge’. A brief three-day overview of part of the planning process by two councillors and a planning officer from elsewhere in the country. All they have done is highlight areas of committee procedure where best practice could be applied.”

Cllr Allen bemoaned a lack of criticism of ‘the council’s approach to pre-application meetings, developer contributions and site visits’ while also suggesting the fact that council leader Cliff Morris — not a committee member — is often substituted on to the Labour benches, should have been mentioned.

He added: “This is a missed opportunity to alleviate public concern that the system is corrupt.

I have no doubt that the three members of this peer challenge panel carried out their review diligently, the blame for the shallow investigation lies with Labour councillors who decided on the terms of reference.

“It was always clear that the intention of the original motion before council was to conduct a truly independent inquiry with full confidential access by the public and staff.

“What we have seen merely scrapes the surface and it is unlikely that the public will view the planning process in Bolton any differently after this review than they did before.”

In response, senior Labour committee member, Cllr Nick Peel said Cllr Allen sounded like ‘a petulant child.’He added: “Now that it is over and the committee has been given a clean bill of health, Cllr Allen is complaining because things have not gone his way.“He is someone who makes insinuations with absolutely no evidence and as a councillor he should behave in a more responsible manner.”He added: “The reason there was no mention of pre-application meetings is because there aren’t any — Cllr Allen needs to just accept the results and get on with it.”