Bedford council apologises for failing to record meetings over local plan

Bedford Borough Council has had to apologise for not providing recordings of public examination hearings for its Local Plan 2040.

These sessions are part of the process to consider the soundness of the submitted plan and whether it has been prepared in accordance with the legal and procedural requirements.

Darren McCreery, the Planning Inspectorate inspector for the local plan, said he and his team had understood that the examination hearings would be recorded and made available.

“It’s come to my attention in the last couple of hours that might not be the case. Can the council give me the latest on that?” he asked.

Jon Shortland, the council’s chief officer for planning, infrastructure and economic growth, replied: “Whilst we were preparing for the hearing session my team became aware that the PA system previously available for use in this room had been removed.

“This was the result of an upgraded system having been installed in the council chamber next door with which the previous system in this room was incompatible.

“As all council meetings have been held in the council chamber since the onset of covid to enable social distancing this change had not been apparent prior to a test session we undertook on June 1.

“We arranged for a system that is in use now to be installed quickly in short notice last week and had assumed that this would allow recordings to occur.

“Regrettably it has transpired that this is not the case.

“I regret that our system is not recording these sessions and I particularly regret that we’ve inadvertently misled you and others,” he said.

Mr McCreery said that as the hearings are open meetings and people are free to attend, so the meetings are complying with the regulations.

“There is, of course, an issue here around what the council said would happen that isn’t happening in this particular case,” he said.

“So obviously we need to move to rectify that as quickly as possible.”

The council was directed to update the website to reflect the latest position.

Moving onto the sessions to be held on Thursday and Friday, Mr McCreery said: “The need for these to be publicly open to people is pretty extreme as that is our only way of having a public accessible meeting and therefore meeting our obligations in terms of examinations.

“So the expectation would be that the support will be available for it to be accessible to people on the day.

“I hope the council understands the seriousness of making sure that that does happen given the circumstances,” he said.

The public hearings are being held in two blocks, Monday, June 12 to Friday, June 23, and Monday, September 11 to Friday, September 22.

More information can be found on the council’s website.