Public were using council form to make 'spurious' requests to 'call in' Bedford planning applications

An online form on Bedford Borough Council’s website allowed members of the public to make ‘spurious’ requests to ‘call-in’ planning applications, a meeting has heard.

Under the current scheme of delegation, planning applications are sent to the planning committee if one (or more) of eight triggers are activated.

One of the triggers is a call-in by a ward councillor – or an adjoining ward councillor if there would be a significant impact on their ward.

Most planning applications in the borough are determined by planning officers, but ‘calling-in’ an application means it will be determined by the planning committee.

Janine Laver, manager of development management, told Monday’s planning committee (November 21) that previously, call-ins were sent via email to a planning officer, but this method meant that they could sometimes be missed.

The process was then moved to an online form – but was hidden from the public after being ‘misused’.

Ms Laver explained: “We’ve moved the call in form behind-the-scenes, so it’s only available to members, because some members of the public used to be able to access that from the committee page and we started to see spurious call-ins from several of you, even though you haven’t called applications in.

“Those applicants thought they could use the form on your behalf, so we’ve taken that out of the public domain so that it is only available to members and hopefully we’ve eliminated that discrepancy,” she said.