WELLINGTON Town Council has decided to scrap its planning committee because councillors have branded it as “meaningless.”

It has been suggested in future that the council deals with planning applications by means of general consensus of opinion among councillors via email rather than face-to-face meetings, while any contentious or larger planning applications could be discussed at a full council meeting.

It comes following another “embarrassing” moment when the council did not initially have enough councillors in attendance at a planning meeting.

A planning committee set for June 2 had to be an “informal discussion” only because it was not quorate and so was reconvened to be held a week later on Monday (June 9) at 6pm.

But by 6.04pm the meeting was unable to start as only Cllrs Sue Fox, Andy Govier, Janet Lloyd and Sean Pringle-Kosikowsky were present when five planning committee members were needed. Cllr Chris Booth was also there, but as he was not a member of the planning committee he could not vote.

Committee chairman, Cllr Lloyd, then phoned Cllr Steve Mercer, a planning member, to ask where he was.

Cllr Mercer was unaware that the committee was sitting, but thankfully dashed to the meeting venue at the United Reform Church Hall in Fore Street and the meeting eventually started at 6.15pm.

The planning meeting was immediately followed by the authority’s policy and finance committee where councillors considered “alternative arrangements for how the town council comments on planning applications.”

Chief executive and town clerk, Dave Farrow, said it was likely the planning committee meetings – as they currently stood – would more often or not have to be cancelled or postponed as they would not be quorate.

The planning committee should have nine members, but so far only six councillors have put themselves forward to sit on that group. And for the planning committee meeting to go-ahead as planned, it would need a maximum of five of those six councillors to attend.

“The fact of the matter is that we’ve still got room for more councillors to sit on the planning committee as we’ve only got six, so it is highly likely that we are going to have a problem for every meeting,” said Mr Farrow.

The Mayor, Cllr Janet Lloyd, said: “Last week’s planning committee was embarrassing and it was embarrassing again earlier this evening!”

Cllr Keith Wheatley added: “The planning committee has become meaningless. I wouldn’t like to see headlines suggesting it’s because we are a bunch of lazy councillors who can’t be bothered to sit on the committee – we work very hard and do a lot of good work.”

Earlier this year Cllr Wheatley told colleagues that Somerset Council – the planning authority – was no longer going to take any notice of local opinions.

And it would appear that councillors feel that meeting in person to discuss run-of-the-mill planning applications is waste of their time.

Councillors recommended to full council that the planning committee should be scrapped and asked Mr Farrow to come up with an alternative way to deal with applications.