Wigan Council strike off 2 planning apps for Standish

Tomorrow Wigan Council was due to discuss and vote on 2 planning applications for Standish. These 2 total yet another 200 houses approx for Standish and will take it the total to nearly 2000 houses for Standish.

However, I have made a complaint some weeks ago about Ray Whittingham and if he is allowed to sit on the committee due to him getting funding from a Standish Developer in his election campaign. Wigan Council have confirmed that they are investigating this but had not come back to me yet. This morning I sent an email asking, and reminding them of this, and then this afternoon the head of planning and the Chair of Planning Committee decided not to hear the 2 planning applications tomorrow. I hear this is due to the ongoing investigation and we have asked for clarification as I cannot not see why the whole process should not be heard tomorrow.

Although the recommendation were to allow the 2 applications the Cllrs could have refused them as requested by myself and the 2 other Standish Independent Cllrs. Now the applicant can apply to the planning inspector to decide whether to allow these allow these applications or not. That would take money yet again out of Standish because if the decision is determined by the inspector the developer pays less fees.

We are against both of these applications and that is why we called them into the planning committee to decide and the planning committee were going to hear from Cllr George Fairhurst tomorrow on why to turn them down but now they will not hear that and allow the developer to go direct to the planning inspector unless they decide to give Wigan council more time.