This is an interesting change that you may have missed.
At a recent Waverley Borough Council Council meeting, amendments to the Constitution for the one and only Waverley Borough Council planning Committees were agreed upon.
So now a minor application needs ten objections (previously, it was five objections before a planning application could be called in for scrutiny by the councillors you elected at the May polls.
For major planning applications, 20 objections are needed. Formerly, it was just ten.
Tory Councillor Jane Austin told her Bramley constituents that Councillors could call contentious applications to the committee without the requisite number of objections if sufficient planning grounds exist. So the message here is if you cannot drum up enough objections among your neighbours, then call on your local councillor and get them to call it in for further scrutiny before it receives the GRANTED stamp.
Plans to produce a new Local Plan Part 1 running from 2023-2043 were signed off by the Council. This will take some considerable years, with an estimated minimum completion date of 2028.
Why have the majority of Waverley BC councillors become so hostile to democracy? An inbuilt doctrine of our unwritten constitution is consultation.
These numbers are much more inline with other authorities. The advent of social media has made it easier than ever to achieve multiple objections on the most basic applications.
Don’t get me started on how the system at large is weighted towards objectors. Silence means complicity – it would be interesting to have a figure of not only how many objections received but how many neighbour notifications were sent out by letter or by subscription to weekly list.