It seems SODC has one rule for itself and another for us.

Back in September we asked if Nurton’s threat to the land south of the Grainger’s would be taken into account when assessing Grainger’s application. The answer from Cathie Scotting was “The LPA can only make a decision on the information submitted with the application.”

In other words no. Not relevant. We must pretend Nurton does not exist. Them’s the rules we supposed.

Then on 19th November Hannah Guest, SODC’s Urban Design Officer, pipes up from the next office. She insists that Grainger must revise their plan to “allow for potential connections to any development that may come forward …”. Grainger has since dutifully complied and changed its road layout “to incorporate improved connectivity to the east of the scheme”.

In other words SODC told Grainger to provide access for Nuron and Grainger was more than happy to do so. What were those rules again?

We queried Hannah’s instruction with a chap called Duncan Grainge who’s a Customer Service Manager for SODC. On 19th November he defended their planning for Nurton: “it is appropriate to approach development in a comprehensive and integrated manner and to that end the layout and design of the current application should not prejudice those objectives.”

Funny that. A ‘comprehensive and integrated’ approach is what what we requested of SODC back in September.

So we looped back to Cathie to see if she could make some sense of all this. On 17th December she replied a little tersely “I have advised previously, and many times, that we can cannot take into consideration speculative proposals which have not materialised (e.g. the Nurton development).”

Doh.

This would be hilarious if the net result was not so damaging. Nurton currently has no access to New Road. Any access Grainger can provide will be very valuable. Literally. SODC’s double standards brings the double whammy threat of Grainger and Nurton one step closer.

And casts doubt on SODC’s impartiality. 

Make your voice heard. Object now.