Planning tantrums add to council costs

It seems that Lib Dem Rob Speht has decided to emulate Tricky Dick by insisting that every application in his ward gets put before the committee for decision; thus adding to already overstretched budgets.

The Landore councillor who holds down half a position within the ruling Administration and harbours occasional Assembly ambitions, told the local rag that he would continue to disregard the system that delegates uncontested schemes for decision to officers following an “earlier argument with planners”. (That’ll learn the bastards).

Despite personally backing recent improvements designed to boost the efficiency of planning services and reduce costs, the green-ish Lib Dem - who rarely tires of polishing his environmental credentials - is unrepentant that his tantrum will produce unnecessary delays for his constituents and generate reams of additional paper in the process. The last committee agenda alone ran to 98 pages with up to 80 copies produced at a time.

But the real kicker is that Speht has himself only managed to attend just 2 out of the 18 area committee meetings held this year – which is probably just as well given his other somewhat slapdash record of declaring interests.

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Speht's own website states "Environmental issues need highlighting and sustainability needs promoting. More local recycling is needed to help cut the £1 million per year waste bill that we have in Swansea". Yeah, right.

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Note: We have decided against publishing the detailed comment submitted by Gus about a planning issue in High Street, Swansea. In light of the serious allegations made we suggest that the matter is reported to the Public Services Ombudsman (http://www.ombudsman-wales.org.uk/)