PLANNING TRAINING

Cllr Harry Grayson was recently made Chair of the Planning Committee at HBC and has requested that all Councillors undertake new training in order to be up to scratch if they are ever called to make decisions on applications. A session was held in June and a second session was held on 23rd July, although only members of the Labour group attended.

Cllr Grayson said, "I'm disappointed that none of the Conservative group attended but the session itself was both informative and entertaining. The planning officer who led the training has done a splendid job and I think that it was more useful than someone simply talking about planning laws for three hours."

Planning training in the past has involved slides which detail the law and what is and isn't permitted when determining applications. The new training sessions have placed Councillors in hypothetical meetings to determine an application and spot the mistakes. A short quiz beforehand with detailed explanations of each answer has proved more effective and feedback from members has been more positive.

The training has been provided in-house by HBC and Harry's wife, Carol, has made up buffets for each session so that Councillors coming straight from work can have some tea at the same time.

Thanks Carol!