I attended the South West Durham Planning Committee  as a substitute for another Councillor this afternoon. Whilst there was some confusion over planning policy during the meeting, overall there was some good debate on two of the three items on the agenda.

However…there is usually a however… Half the committee is made up of councillors who don’t live in any of the three former district areas (Sedgefield, Wear Valley, Teesdale). This is and area covering 500 square miles, with several dozen County Councillors. The planning committee has 16 councillors (members), only 8 from these areas. The other 8 have to come from Derwentside, Chester-le-Street, Durham City and Easington.

The same goes for the committees covering the North and East of the County.

So each planning meeting intelligent councillors travel from Barnard Castle to a planning meeting in Chester-le-Street and intelligent councillors from Chester-le-Street trundle off to Easington of Spennymoor. This wastes time and money and most fundamentally, councillors who are not even remotely from an area decide on matters they should be deciding on in another area – ie where they were elected.

It’s daft, bonkers, waste of money and Labour’s fault. Cross party opposition (Independent, Lib Dem Tory and others) have tried to change this but Labour don’t want to. Perhaps a few residents could write to complain. After all it means that in Durham City, 12 of the 16 members of the committee represent areas outside of the old Durham City district. Making these committees more local would save money and bring back some of the democracy we lost with the scrapping of the old district councils. and save a bit of money from those councillors who claim for travel to meetings sometimes 30 miles from home.