Thanks for posting that link, clearly there was a LOT of misrepresentation about the fallback scheme by people interested in promoting the larger scheme, which did mean that councillors would have been making their decision on incorrect information e.g.
"There are mixed comments from various councillors. At 1:09:01, a councillor was clearly concerned that the Fallback Scheme "will be incredibly poor quality" and he references in terms the officers' views. At 1:13:26, a different councillor refers to the Committee being "between a rock and a hard place" and his concern that "it's very likely that the [F]allback [S]cheme will be built which is suboptimal" but then states "no one's suggesting that the old or the substantive scheme is …of a poor standard." At 1:48:18, another councillor confessed to being "a little bit lost in where [Mr Harris KC] was going" and sought legal advice as to whether to approve the Proposal "would be going against the planning inspector". In my judgment, it is impossible to discern the collective view of the Committee from soundbite comments from individual councillors. It is relevant that not all of the councillors spoke. I am certainly not persuaded that by 1:48:37 the discussion in meeting had been sufficient to correct the erroneous legal advice given in the OR. The overwhelming impression from the comments made by the councillors is that they had an overly negative view of the Fallback Scheme, no doubt because no one has explained to them in clear terms that the Inspector had rejected the officers' conclusions about poor design quality and poor living accommodation, and far less had anyone explained why the Inspector came to that conclusion."
Reading that certainly makes me change my mind and think that maybe the larger scheme won't get approved by the council. |