Planning Committee - Lack of Agendas, No Sound in public gallery, Council's Video Link not working!
Planning Committee Meeting held at Ealing Town Hall on 17th August 2022:I attended Ealing Council’s Planning Committee Meeting on Wednesday 17th August 2022 at 7pm in order to hear the debate and consideration of the major Planning Application proposed for the East Acton Arcade off Old Oak Common Lane in Acton W3.The proposals were to demolish a number of existing commercial shops and businesses which present an attractively-shaped frontage including the very popular London Snooker Club upstairs which has been operating there for several decades with thousands of members.There are 100 objections including from the Ealing Civic Society and from the adjacent London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham where there is a Conservation Area immediately facing the proposed development land. In planning, views into or out of a Conservation Area should be considered in any planning application. The Planning Committee Meeting was held in the Ealing Town Hall Main Chamber. On arrival at the public gallery upstairs, I noticed there were no Agendas whatsoever!I called to the Committee Clark, Mr Jack Roberts, to ask if he had some Agendas for the members of the public to read upstairs and follow the proceedings. Mr Roberts brought one Agenda and Briefing Notes upstairs and I gave the Agenda to the owner of the Snooker Club who was sitting on the other side of the public gallery, as she did not have one. There were only about 7 people in the public gallery as the Meeting was convened in the middle of the summer - suppose if over 100 members of the snooker club had attended having to share 1 Agenda between them!It was therefore not possible for me to follow the case at all. I later saw (after the Meeting was over) that there are in fact 70 pages in the Agenda Report including the Location Plan. When the Meeting started at 7pm, I immediately noticed that the sound system was not working upstairs. I called out to the Chair of the Meeting (Councillor T Mahmood) asking if the sound could be switched on please but this did not happen unfortunately.The amount of sound reaching the upper gallery is rather muted especially when some of the officers and councillors sitting downstairs are softly spoken or do not speak close enough to their microphones. I normally record the meeting with a Dictaphone but with the speakers switched off, this was impossible. Someone in the front row of the gallery mentioned that the proceedings are shown on computer on the web. However since I was at the Town Hall in person, this was of little use. Furthermore not long after the Meeting started, one of the Committee Councillors (Councillor Anand, I believe) mentioned that he had just received a message on his telephone from a resident to say that the Council's video link to the Meeting was not working.I later heard the following day from an Acton resident who had unsuccessfully tried on two occasions to access the meeting between 7:30 and 7:45 via the video link. This lady told me the same error message continued to appear when she subsequently tried to access the July and August Planning Committee Meetings from the Council's links.Finally, in past days, even when there were maybe a dozen or more applications on the agenda (not just one as on Wednesday night), a full set of plans was pinned up on a bulletin board for each case and these were visible downstairs on the ground floor of the main chamber and enabled people attending the Meeting to look at the various plans in any particular application that they were interested in before the Meeting commenced.However there were no plans whatsoever available. During the Committee Meeting, some of the plans were shown on 2 TV screens downstairs but even the larger of the two screens could not be clearly seen from where I was upstairs in the public gallery some distance away from the screens. It is often said by the Planning Department staff that “everything is on the web” however this is incorrect. In many cases, documentation has been withheld and in other cases, mere summaries have been given by officers which do not always reflect the actual contents being summarised as alluded to above.All told, procedures appear to have deteriorated of late.In summary, Agendas were not amply provided, the Sound System was switched off upstairs and the Video link provided by the Council did not and still does not work.Victor Mishiku "The Covenant Movement"(attendant at Committee Meetings for the last 36 years)20th August 2022.
Victor Mishiku ● 992d3 Comments