useless planning officer - any suggestions?

Grimbal

Many thanks all & apologies for the delay in my reply.

So, on Monday we called up the PO to be told that the local member has to be asked if the planning dept can proceed without his advice. Fine. Was told it was "only an email", so should be sent off pretty sharpish. Called Tues AM to find that he was "drafting it as we speak" & would be sent off & that he would confirm. No contact by 2PM so called and was told that it had to get signed off by his manager & would confirm. No contact by 4PM, so I called the head of planning to have a chat about 1. the POs lack of action & 2. misinformation being fed to us by PO.

Conversation seemed to go well. I hopefully clearly discriminated between not being frustrated at the planning process and tearing my hair out over the particular PO. Head of dept didnt seem to surprised at this tbh, which makes me wonder if this guy has a particular history. Explained that out of the 46 applications made on the week we did, 41 had been actioned. Out of the remaining 5, 4 were of "non-standard" application type - eg 148 retirement flats. So, ours was the only householder application out of 46 that had yet to be dealt with.

Aaaaaanyway, head of planning said that he would personally ensure that the PO's line manager would sign off the email. They then called to confirm it had been done !! Now have to wait until Friday lunchtime to find out if either the local member wants to provide input or whether the PO can make an autonomous decision. How long after that the decision will be made is another matter.......:mad:

mrschaucer

Excellent! At last the wheels are moving. Persistence obviously pays off, and we now look forward to hearing that this little charmer has either got his act together and sorted out your permission or has got himself a warning for p*ss poor work.

Grimbal

Aaaaaaaarrrrggggggghhhhhhh!

Local member to whom the application was forwarded has had a bereavement, so been passed onto another member. This member could not be contacted today but apparantly "has a query". Planning officer on leave on Monday, so we'll have to wait another few days before we hear if the local member is happy to delegate - now looking end of the week at very earliest.

I'm tempted to say b*gger the lot of them and build to PD

mrschaucer

Do you feel a Complaint coming on?

Grimbal

Halle-blimmen-lujah

Almost 14 weeks to the day, and we've got a decision: application permitted !

can not believe how ruddy useless this guy was, but apparantly building control are far better & our builder has a pretty good relationship with them (or so he says !), so hopefully will be starting building soon !

yay!

mrschaucer

You'll be taking him in a Christmas bonus? Congrats on the outcome, and yes, in our experience building control are very professional. Job (nearly) done!