Is a nightmare at the best of times, but the nightmare created by this government has been highlighted to me not once, but twice in the past week.
1stly - At Thursday's meeting of the Planning Policy Committee we were told that we needed to update a list of milestones (which we are forced by law to have) due to our success in getting our core strategy approved. However, the government has threatened to penalise councils who change their milestones. How ridiculous, force us to have a list and then force us not to change it despite us putting in place a Core Strategy that we are forced to have! What's more the reason that milestones take so long to get approved is that our Planning Department spend 1/2 their time submitting democratically approved and publicly consulted plans up to central government for them to review and change and then wait for them to send them back.
2ndly - Due to the bungling Government consulting the County Council (which has no remit in this area) over funding to improve Play Areas, the Surrey Districts (including Tandridge) had no ability to bid for the funds and the opportunity to bid closed before the County was able to coordinate a response. Madness. Local Councils need to be set free from such a straightjacket. If this didn't mean that children in Tandridge will miss out on around a £million of funding, it would be funny.
Both examles demonstrate that there is ample scope to cut out a wasteful layer of central management which just hinders the ability of locally elected councils to deliver quality services to local people. And on the first example, the leader of the Lib Dem opposition on TDC agreed with me.
