A COMMERCIAL design consultancy offering its clients advice on how to get planning approval from Bournemouth council is being launched... by Bournemouth council.

The business is being bolted on to the authority's Seascape South Limited, a trading company established earlier this year to provide residents with building services, in a bid to reduce the number of invalid applications received by planning officers.

Explaining the proposal at last month's cabinet meeting, planning portfolio holder Cllr David Smith said it is being established to help residents who "don't know where to go" when applying to build extensions or to develop their properties.

"From the first point of contact we can offer the use of an architect which will be on a panel that we have - and they will be able to help and advise each applicant of all the issues they have to go through to get what they want," said Cllr Smith.

"It is hoped by doing that, not only will we get a smoother service, we will get a lot less invalid applications and it will be a lot less work for the teams taking registrations.

"Hopefully the applications coming forward will be of a higher quality."

He said around 50 per cent of applications the council receives are "a bit vague and not very good", adding: "So we are trying to offer a service - a sort of cradle to grave service if you like - where people from their first point of contact can be helped."

Seconding the motion, Cllr Mike Greene said: "It is absolutely right that at this point and throughout the service provision we make absolutely clear that there will be no favourable treatment to applications that come through this route."

Ward councillor for Westbourne and West Cliff Rae Stollard, however, raised concerns and compared the consultancy to her experience of working for the Citizens Advice Bureau.

She said: "We were not allowed to give any specific architect a recommendation - we just had to give them the list - because we were liable probably for any malpractice or failure of that design.

"So I am just a bit worried what the liability would be if a planning application was refused when they had used these architects."

Cllr Smith replied that no promises about applications being accepted would be made, something that would be made clear to the applicants from a "very early stage".

He added: "There would be a rolling list of potential designers and architects who could help."

The cabinet unanimously approved the plans to incorporate the new service into Seascape South Limited.