{"id":4312,"date":"2010-05-02T21:36:54","date_gmt":"2010-05-02T21:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.onlinefocus.org\/?p=4312"},"modified":"2010-05-02T21:38:36","modified_gmt":"2010-05-02T21:38:36","slug":"a-hat-trick-of-successes-for-the-district-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onlinefocus.org\/a-hat-trick-of-successes-for-the-district-council\/","title":{"rendered":"A Hat-Trick Of Successes For The District Council"},"content":{"rendered":"
One of the unique things about Rochford District Council is that all 39 councillors are normally members of the Development Committee, which deals with planning applications.<\/p>\n
Every other council seems to have a specialised committee with a smaller number of councillors on it.<\/p>\n
So when a team of government inspectors from somewhere like the Audit Commission come to visit, the size of the committee tends to be a talking point. Basically on the lines of ‘all these councillors taking part, doesn’t it lead to bad decision making, don’t you get lots of decisions overturned by a planning inspector?<\/p>\n
The answer is actually ‘no, we don’t<\/em> lose too many appeals.’<\/p>\n For example in 2009 the council won about 33 appeals, lost about 15, and there was 1 ‘split decision’. So that’s a success rate of about 66%. You can download the list here.<\/a> (22kb).<\/p>\n