THE appeal decision on the application to site mobile homes for show people at Sankey railway station raises concerns both about the way the council's officers handled the inquiry and, more generally, about the council's procedures for handling such appeals.

I attended the inquiry for two hours on the first day and for the whole of the morning session on the second day. Council officers were clearly ill prepared for vigorous cross examination by Mr Silcock's barrister. To note just one example, the solicitor representing the council was reduced to arguing about whether a figure (from memory) 81.2 should be rounded up to 82 or down to 81 in order to make a point about noise levels.

My second point is more serious and follows from the first. The inspector based his decision on noise, road safety, harm to the setting of a listed building and harm to the character of the area. According to his report he gave "great weight" to the original opinion of the officers that the application should be approved. He also referred in his consideration of three of the four issues to the fact that the refusual of permission by the Development Control committee was against officers' advice.

I am not in a position to contradict council officers. What I do question is the suitability of the officers who originally recommended acceptance of the application to then defend its rejection at a public inquiry. In town planning, as in most other disciplines, there is room for differences of opinion even among qualified and experienced professionals. I give the officers who prepared the committee report the credit for making their judgements to the best of their ability. I hope, and assume, that, as professionals, they were prepared to stand by those judgements.

However, I believe it was unfair on those officers to then expect them to argue against their own professional opinion at the inquiry. I would also suggest that it showed contempt for the views of local residents who campaigned against the application and for their elected representatives who voted to reject it. If no officers could be found within the council who disagreed with the original committee report, then it ought to be possible to bring in outside experts who are prepared to put the case vigorously and wholeheartedly. If the objection to this is cost, I can only say that I understand that costs have been awarded against the council in this case. Perhaps a stronger defence of the council's position would have, at least, have to be a different decision on the award of costs.

The people of Great Sankey have been badly let down. The council's policies and procedures on planning inquiries must be reviewed as a matter of urgency if embarrassments such as I witnessed at the town hall in August are to be avoided in the future.

ROY SMITH

Parish Councillor (Liberal Democrat), Great Sankey

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.