Long Sutton Parish Council call for independent review into planning application
A parish council is calling for an independent review over a planning application.
Long Sutton Parish Council is vowing to fight a decision to grant district councillor Jack Tyrrell permission to change the use of a building at Silverwood Garden Centre in Brown’s Gate, Long Sutton.
The building was due to be demolished as part of a planning application granted in June 2016 for a replacement dwelling - but it had been saved from the axe when it became an office/storage space for the garden centre in November 2020.
The parish council had called for an independent review into the decision taken by South Holland District Council’s planning committee in July last year.
But after being unhappy with the response Long Sutton Parish Council has now made a complaint against the district council to the Local Government Ombudsman.
Parish council chairman John Clarey said they would not have pursued this further if they had ‘sensible answers’ out of MP Sir John Hayes and the district council.
Coun Clarey said: “We had not had any decisions at all.
“We have taken the decision to be fair to the other parishoners who have pulled down their houses (as required by a planning permission condition).”
Coun Tyrrell said that if planning officers had not recommended the application for approval he wouldn’t have submitted it.
He said: “I went by the book. Everything I have done is by the book.
“Planning law changes all the time, one minute you can do something and the next time you can’t because the situation has changed.
“It wasn’t me who changed the law but the Government.”
A district council spokesman said: “A thorough and detailed review was undertaken through the council’s complaints procedure into the concerns raised by Long Sutton Parish Council and the findings were communicated to the parish council in January 2023.
“The parish council has confirmed that it referred the matters to the Local Government Ombudsman and subsequently advised that the Ombudsman could not investigate the complaint”