Mendip District Council has granted planning permission for the revised plans for a Co-op convenience store at Fromefield, which will demolish the former surgery building on the corner with Rodden Road/Bath Road, after the planning officer recommended approval and the Chair and Vice Chair of the Planning Board waived it through, despite local objections.

I am one of the ward councillors and I asked for the case to be referred to the Planning Board for a public debate and decision by councillors, largely due to the concerns about road and pedestrian safety, design and building conservation that were raised by local residents. However, the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Planning Board (both Conservatives and not from Frome) refused my request, and it was granted permission as a result.

This is very frustrating as it is a ward councillor’s job to represent local residents, review all the evidence and try and get the Council to make the right decisions. I saw that there was a disagreement between Mendip’s officers and people in Frome (the Town Council, heritage experts and local residents) about whether a new modern commercial building of this design was appropriate in a Conservation Area and next to listed buildings, where conserving the architectural heritage is most important, and wanted the issues to be debated in public at Planning Board. I also saw that there was a disagreement between Somerset Highways and a local resident expert highways consultant, about road safety and pedestrian safety, which again I wanted to be examined in public.  Somerset Highways stuck to their guns and insisted that a safety assessment was not required now, although they recommended a planning condition that the current proposals do not comply with, so the proposals are likely to have to change anyway. I wanted this issue to be resolved before permission was granted, which I thought was a valid concern, but I was over-ruled on this also. Mendip’s current system means that councillors who do not know a site can over-rule local councillors and local residents concerns. They make these decisions largely in order to save time and money by reducing the numbers of applications going to Planning Board. This does not do the reputation of Mendip District Council any favours, and I think they made the wrong decision in this case.    I have asked for their reasons, and await to hear.

Update, Sept 2014: The decision notice and planning conditions can be found here. I have heard back from the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Planning Board (Conservatives not from Frome) after I raised concerns about the decision, who tell me that my request did not meet their own criteria for referring applications. However, they have been unable to give me any specific reasons why my request was refused, or any specific responses to the issues I raised (pedestrian and road safety, heritage conservation and protected species conservation). This is frustrating, and I think it is unacceptable. I will now be asking that they be required to give specific reasons for their decisions on planning applications in future.

See http://adamboyden.mycouncillor.org.uk/2014/07/02/local-planning-update/ for previous news and links on this.