Developers seeking to bring forward more than 2,000 new homes in the London borough of Havering are claiming the council is purposely delaying their applications.
They claim to have been waiting for as much as a year for their planning applications to be heard and that their proposals are being compared unfairly with council plans for the same sites, on which the council has said it can deliver 35% affordable housing.
Viability assessments for the developers have suggested 10%, a figure which has been verified by an independent assessor on the request of the council.
The sites along New Road in Rainham, where private developers including Havering Gateway, Ash Properties and Affinity Global Real Estate have plans to deliver new homes, are subject to a potential compulsory purchase by the council, which has formed a joint venture with Notting Hill Housing to deliver 774 homes itself on the sites.
The developers claim that they have been provided with “no legitimate reason” as to why their schemes have not been sent to committee. They are accusing the council of being “entirely incapable of carrying out their statutory duty to administer planning applications in an effective and proper manner”.
The delays and upset among the local developer community has led one councillor to accuse the council of maladministration. Councillor Lawrence Webb said he had approached the local government ombudsman about referring the planning department to it.
He said: “There is direct political interference in the planning process.”
Emails sent to the council chief executive, Andrew Blake Herbert, seen by EG, accuse the council of directly comparing separate applications and that in doing so it was “undeniably failing in its duty as a planning authority and therefore guilty of maladministration, potentially opening the council up to legal action and claims for damages”.
The council did not respond to requests for comment.
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