DISCLOSURES about councillors' attendance at planning site visits has been banded "morally wrong" by a member a Cumbria County Council's development control committee.

Committee chairman John Robinson produced a list of how many site visits each of his committee members had attended over the past year.

Members of the committee, who decide the fate of many important planning applications in the county, call for site visits when they feel they cannot decide contentious issues on plans and pictures alone. According to council records, only chairman Mr Robinson went on all of the eight site visits called over the last 12 months.

The figures show that three councillors did not manage to attend a single one and, on average, each of the 15-member committee managed just 3.7 site visits.

Their publication earned Mr Robinson a roasting from members, who claimed the figures were inaccurate, misleading and therefore it was wrong to make them public.

Veteran councillor Bill Cameron said that among the discrepancies, the records failed to show times when he had sent a substitute to site visits when detained on other council business and said it was "legally and morally wrong" to publish the figures.

Ulverston councillor Wendy Kolbe was one of three members who, according to the figures, had not managed to get to a single site visit.

She complained she had been at one in August and went on to say: "I think it's a bit unfortunate we have come to this.

"We have to strike a balance between our own lives, our personal lives and our family lives, every member of this committee has to do that. Although we would like to attend, sometimes it just does not happen."

She pointed out that the vast majority of applications were decided without a site visit and said committee meetings were far more important and the committee was generally "very conscientious and dedicated".

Coun Peter Phizacklea was outraged. According to the council figures, he has attended only five meetings but, he claimed, he had actually been to, and been paid expenses for, six visits. The council figures therefore left him open to allegations of impropriety, he said.

If the committee was to insist on publishing the figures, he added, they must at least be accurate.

But Mr Robinson said it was "dilettante" of committee members to take important decisions having not been on site visits called to help decide the issues and insisted that revealing the figures would encourage councillors to do better in future.

"I want to keep on publishing them because they are a pointer to what is going on in this committee," he said.

May 16, 2003 09:30