There were “serious flaws” in the way Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council approved a plan to demolish a listed Victorian schoolroom and build new houses on the site.

There were “serious flaws” in the way Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council approved a plan to demolish a listed Victorian schoolroom and build new houses on the site, finds Local Government Ombudsman, Anne Seex. In her report, issued today (17 February 2010) she says: “If the Planning Sub-Committee had been properly advised and directed to the proper considerations for these applications, I believe that it would not have approved the applications.”

In response to complaints from residents, the Ombudsman found serious errors and omissions in the report and presentation to the Council’s Planning Sub-Committee that granted the permissions. The applicants had argued that demolishing the schoolroom and selling the site with planning permission would ‘enable’ the associated distinctive, listed Chapel to be repaired and refurbished. The Planning Officer accepted this without applying any of the tests required by English Heritage for such ‘enabling’ development and the Sub-Committee were not told of: 

• the law requiring them to have special regard to preserving the listed Schoolroom;
• national planning guidance that there should be a general presumption in favour of preserving listed buildings;
• the specific tests that they should have applied before giving permission for the Schoolroom to be demolished; and
• relevant comments from the Council’s own conservation specialists.

Thirty-two photographs were shown to the Sub-Committee to illustrate the dilapidated condition of the Schoolroom – 24 of them were of a completely different building.

The Ombudsman says: The failure to give clear, comprehensible professional views and assessments of the two applications was maladministration.”

She concludes that the Council’s maladministration caused injustice to the people who complained. The injustice was the potential loss of part of their area’s built heritage that contributes to the setting of the distinctive, listed Chapel and the general character of the conservation area.

The Ombudsman recommends that the Council should remedy this injustice by seeking to negotiate for the permissions to be relinquished in favour of a new scheme, for which it will meet reasonable design costs and planning application fees. In the event that negotiations fail the Council should consider revoking the permissions after considering a full report on all the relevant issues.

Report ref 07C14968 & 07C17131.

Article date: 17 February 2010