A COUNCIL has ‘politely declined’ a cash payment offered when it agreed to overturn its previous refusal of planning permission to rebuild a 200-year-old farmhouse.
A bizarre turn of events lead to the application by Mike Wells for approval for the rebuilding of Bushes Farm, on a mountainside at Earlswood near Shirenewton, west of Chepstow, being reconsidered in December last year.
That was just a month after Monmouthshire County Council’s planning committee had rejected it after planning officers said a collapse of the original structure meant the rebuild and extension had become a new development that couldn’t be allowed in the open countryside.
Mr Wells then had a surprise second chance for his application for the work, that started under a previously approved application from 2018, to be given consent when it transpired a member of the committee, who had been attending via video link, had disappeared off screen for a short while during the discussion in November.
That meant the decision had to be taken again and the refusal, which was only made on the casting vote of the chairman, was overturned. Among promises made to the council on behalf of Mr Wells, by his planning agent in December, was an offer of a financial contribution towards affordable housing.
One councillor claimed that could be worth up to £30,000.
The application came back to the January 14 committee meeting, in line with the council’s policy requiring conditions for approval, but head of planning Amy Longford said the affordable housing contribution wasn’t included as a condition.
Ms Longford, in her first meeting as head of planning, told councillors: “It is recommended the offer of an affordable housing payment be politely declined.”
The newly installed planning chief, promoted since the December meeting where she failed to persuade the committee it should refuse permission, said as the application is now being approved as a “rebuild” the council’s planning policy don’t require a contribution towards affordable housing.
Croesonen member Su McConnell urged the committee to approve the conditions for approval and “move on”.
The Labour councillor said: “I think it’s important we don’t have money changing hands, albeit in a good cause, related to planning applications. I’m sure it’s not made cynically and I do not regard it as such, but it should not, in my view, be a condition.”
Dewstow Labour member Tony Eason suggested Mr Wells could “find some way of doing something with the local community centre” as the council said it couldn’t accept the money.
Shierenwton Conservative Louise Brown had urged the committee to reinstate the affordable housing contribution and a condition on restoring a meadow where an unauthorised track had been cut during construction as well as the removal of a caravan.
Cllr Brown asked Ms Longford for a “categorical assurance” the council would take enforcement action if the meadow, and a SINC area of nature conservation, aren’t restored. The councillor said she had first reported the track in summer 2022.
Ms Longford said the council would start enforcement proceedings if the land isn’t restored, as promised by Mr Wells.
Speaking in the council chamber she said: “I have an assurance from the applicant, who is sat in the back of the room, he will be addressing these issues as a matter of priority.”