The National Park Authority has issued a quite extraordinary notice on the Latchmore ‘restoration’ planning application: It says that it is minded to grant approval (the actual decision will be taken on 15 Nov), but that it supports my request to the Secretary of State to have the application ‘called in’ – given “the unusually high number of objections and the widely perceived view that the Authority has a prejudicial interest in the application”.
I would have thought that the unusually high number of objections would be proper grounds to reject the application, or at the very least to examine why so many people are so opposed to it.
As for the perceived conflict of interest, I’m glad that they have finally spotted it: not long ago we were just being told that it was routine for planning authorities to determine their own applications. Which is true, but then, this is no routine application.