There was a bit of a fiasco at the District Council tonight. The “Planning Policy and Transportation Committee” was supposed to have been considering some important policy documents. These deal with such things as minimum garden sizes for new homes, parking space requirements for new homes etc.
Trouble was, the Conservatives had had one of their group meetings last Monday night and it clearly hadn’t gone well. They’d apparently spent all evening discussing these issues and couldn’t come to a conclusion.
So the end result is that the council is setting up yet another working party that will meet in the daytime two or three times to settle everything (probably with a modest council buffet arranged) This makes it very difficult for councillors who work – such as Tory committee chairman Phil Capon and our Lib Dem Chris Black – to get to these meetings. So the influence on this now passes to a few retired councillors who can meet up in the daytime to make the recommendations.
The funny thing was – tonight’s meeting only lasted 22 minutes; it ended as soon as the Tories had set up the new working party. If the committee had actually got down to work and discussed these issues, they might have got half the work done by 10:30 pm!