A WAR of words has broken out after a planning inspector overruled councillors and allowed a developer to build without making a contribution to affordable housing.
The government’s planning inspectorate has given permission for Churchill Retirement Living to build 35 sheltered apartments for elderly people in Gillingham after the developer appealed a council ruling.
But district councillors – who had refused Churchill’s planning application after the developer said a £500,000 contribution to affordable housing would make the development unviable – have reacted angrily.
Gillingham councillor David Milsted has written to the secretary of state for communities and local government, Eric Pickles, urging him to call in a decision by planning inspector David Morgan.
“It creates an appalling precedent whereby any other developer could now renege on a previous agreement to provide affordable housing, on the basis of temporary ‘unviability’,” wrote Mr Milsted.
He said the decision made it impossible for the district council to plan its affordable housing provision, and risked creating a “two-tier” planning system.
“We believe that the Planning Inspectorate, as it currently operates, is dysfunctional and is in urgent need of reform,” he added.
But directors at the Ringwood-based retirement home builder blasted the council for wasting tax payers’ money by pursuing its own agenda.
Company chairman and managing director, Spencer McCarthy, said the council had gone out of its way to frustrate development, and urged it to review its handling of the appeal. “I should mention that this appeal has cost the local tax payer thousands of pounds because the planners have their own agenda,” he said.
“In these difficult economic times, councils should be looking to tighten the purse strings of public finance and not waste money.”
A spokesman for the Department of Communities and Local Government said Mr Pickles could not call in the decisions of the Planning Inspectorate, adding that the decision could only be challenged by Judicial Review in the High Court.
A spokesman for North Dorset District Council ruled out an appeal to the High Court.
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