I don’t know if anyone saw this story about Havering council in Essex. The report of it in Private Eye’s Rotten Boroughs was even more lively.

According to PI a planning committee meeting dissolved into giggles, frequent baa-ing, and jokey insinuations of sheep-shagging, before throwing out an application which the officers were wholeheartedly recommending. The applicant, not surprisingly, felt her application was not being taken seriously.

Apparently the whole committee are being reported to the Standards Board for England. Should be an open-and-shut case: if making the phrase sheep-shagging synonymous with Havering council is not bringing your authority into disrepute, I don’t know what is. Its just a shame that Havering do not make video recordings of their meetings available on their website like Camden do.

Joking aside, I went on an introduction to planning course at Oxford Brookes when I joined the council, and the first thing they told us, and the thing I most vividly remember from the whole thing, was never to forget that however small-scale a planning application might be, it is probably the most important thing currently in the life of the applicant, and any objectors – usually involving great expenditure or significant impact on property values or quality of life. It sounds like a few councillors in Havering could benefit from a visit to Oxford Brookes.

On the other hand, having a look at their agenda for this item, I noticed that they do something in their meetings which I never did in Crawley’s meetings and never noticed any other chairs do either: the chair pointed out the fire evacuation routes in his opening remarks. Page one of the health & safety manual and it never even crossed our mind at Crawley, not even for those meetings about travellers or council house transfer, which filled out the chambers. In retrospect it is such an obvious thing to do. It just goes to show, you can learn a lesson from anyone, even if they conduct their meetings like old MacDonald’s farm.