The members of the NYMP planning committee are complete amateurs. They have no experience and they have no qualifications which would enable them to reach a decision even about the erection of a garage. They are all appointees, political or otherwise, who have managed to avoid upsetting the people who matter. Yet here they are entrusted with reaching a decision on one of the countries most important planning applications of the last decade.
And that is why they employee highly paid planning experts to advise them. And what have these experts done – firstly they have abrogated their prime responsibility of advising the committee. Secondly they have let it be known for weeks in advance and almost proudly, that their recommendation would be an open one – in other words it would not be a recommendation at all, it would not constitute advice for which they could be held responsible if it were wrong, or praised if it were right.
And they have failed in their duties because they have found, as experts, that there are no “exceptional circumstances” to justify the granting of the application, which means that as a matter of law, it must be refused. So why are these so called experts afraid to say so. Why are they falsely pretending that their decision is an open one when it was their duty to advise the committee to issue a refusal. Why have they not taken and published legal advice as to the consequences of their findings and made sure that the committee has the benefit of that legal advice.
The answer is probably quite simple. They were too weak willed to be seen giving the advice which they are being paid to give because it would have upset one side or the other and they preferred to claim they were sitting on the fence – so that nobody could be upset with them.
Unless the committee has guts ( and which committee does) the committee will, in similar fashion pass the buck on the 30th June and refuse the application so that they can leave it to somebody else to make the decision, perhaps in a year or twos time, if we are lucky.
If the committee had any sense ( and which committee does) it would have called for the heads of the planning officers who have sought to so mislead t hem ( but being a committee, it won’t)
HiddenGreece – villas and houses for sale in Greece – http://www.hiddengreece.net