Wednesday 6 May 2020

Sudbury Town Station planning application referred back after it was opposed 4-3 by Planning Committee

After members of the Planning Committee opposed the approval of the Sudbury Town Station car park planning application by 4 votes to 3, officers moved quickly to rescue the situation by recommending deferrral so that if could be refered back to officers and the applicant for further review and future resubmission.

When Cllr Maurice expressed concern that this would mean a 'cover up' Cllr Denselow, in his best avuncular manner (despite his youth) said of course not, 'it will be coming back to us.'

Reasons councillors gave for opposing the application  included its departure from several policies, the need for family homes rather than one bedroomed houses, loss of access to the step-free station for disabled people due to the loss of the car park, placing disabled parking spaces in already heavily used local streets, and one councillor who said he who didn't believe the planning officers report.

Sudbury Planners (part of Sudbury Town residents Association) were very active on Twitter throughout the discussion:















4 comments:

Jaine Lunn said...

Good result for now.

Martin Francis said...

Comment after the meeting by Paul Lorber: I have taken part in the meeting and watched the 2 hour session on the Sudbury application.

The Committee voted 4 votes against 3 to refuse the application.

Following officer intervention a 2nd vote took place to defer it and for officers to work with the applicant to bring it back with possible changes.

If the vote had gone 4 to 3 in favour would it still have been deferred with objectors given a 2nd chance?

This looks very odd and needs to be explained

Philip Grant said...

Sudbury residents want the application deferred, but Council Officers refuse that, and say that it must go ahead at Planning Committee for a decision.

Sudbury residents and councillors present their objection arguments for just 3 or 5 minutes each. Council Officers are given as much time as they want to ramble on about why they think the application should be accepted. Planning Committee reaches a decision, on good planning grounds, and rejects the Council Officers recommendation.

Council Officer then asks for a deferral of the application, and gets it!

What a crazy world we're living in!

Martin Francis said...

Plan B to avoid an Appeal?