With a minister like this........

AudlemOnline has been receiving emails and information from many areas around England suffering the curse of speculative planning applications by Gladman Developments, the company behind the proposal to build 120 houses at Little Heath Audlem.

Many MPs have been brought into the issue by worried constituents. We only hope those MPs show a little more gumption and backbone than Nick Boles MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Planning, who is responsible for planning and development, who we assume has seen this letter sent out by his department about a Gladman application in Stroud, Gloucestershire:

Dear Mr (name provided)
Summer Street, Stroud.
Thank you for your email of the 25 March 2013 to Nick Boles MP, I have been asked to reply on his behalf on this occasion.

I should say at the outset that every local planning authority is responsible for the proper planning of its own area. Every authority is accountable to its electorate and ultimately to the Courts for the procedures it follows and for the decisions it takes on applications for planning permission to carry out development in the area (including its own applications for development).

The authority also has a general responsibility to ensure that developers and users of land comply with any conditions attached to planning permission for the development and use of land, and to enforce compliance with any such conditions.

I note your concerns in relation to planning applications which have been submitted to Stroud District Council for a development in Summer Street, Stroud. I would like to explain that it is a matter for the council to ensure that all of the required information is submitted with an application. However, if the council considers that the applicant hasn't provided all of the required information, it is a matter for them to request the information before they determine the application.
I hope the above is helpful.
Yours sincerely
Ms M Peart
Planning Casework Officer

AudlemOnline has a list of MPs who have been contacted by constituents – it includes almost all Cheshire East and Cheshire West & Chester MPs and many from Lancashire, Oxfordshire, North Yorkshire, Gloucestershire and elsewhere.

Hopefully, they will start to pressurise Nick Boles and his boss Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to close the loophole Gladman is exploiting when councils may not have yet completed their local plan.

Unfortunately, the signs from Mr Boles, an ex-Merchant Banker who has been widely criticised in the media for seemingly being in favour of widespread development, have not been an encouraging start to the process of persuading government to stop the loopholes being exploited by Gladman.

Our correspondent has written back to the Minister saying his response is unsatisfactory and limp and could he please come back with a more considered one – to which it is hard to disagree. Hopefully, the large number of MPs now involved will be made of sterner stuff.

For those interested in keeping up-to-date with Gladman developments we have created a special Gladman index in the newsroom. You access it by clicking the Gladman banner on the homepage. To go there now click here.

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