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LGO raps Kirklees MBC over serious planning flaws in Victorian schoolroom demolition

The Local Government Ombudsman has found “serious flaws” in the way Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council approved a plan to demolish a Victorian Sunday schoolroom and build four new houses on the site.

Anne Seex said: “If the planning sub-committee had been properly advised and directed to the proper considerations for these applications, I believe that it would not have approved the applications”.

The applicants – the Methodist Church – had claimed that demolition of the classroom and selling the site with planning permission would help to pay for the repair and refurbishment of the associated, Grade 2 listed chapel.

But the planning officer had accepted this without applying any of the tests required by English Heritage for such ‘enabling’ development. The sub-committee were not told of:

  • The law requiring them to have special regard to preserving the listed schoolroom
  • National planning guidance that there should be a general presumption in favour of preserving listed buildings
  • The specific tests they should have applied before giving permission for the schoolroom to be demolished, and
  • Relevant comments made by the senior officer in the council’s conservation section.

Of 32 photographs shown to the sub-committee to illustrate the dilapidated condition of the schoolroom, some 24 were of a completely different building.

“The flaws eclipse any issues about the way that the council dealt with the representations it received on the applications,” the Ombudsman said.

Handing down a finding of maladministration, Seex concluded that injustice had been caused to the complainants in that there was a potential loss of part of their area’s built heritage.

She recommended that the council should seek to negotiate that the permissions be relinquished in favour of a new scheme. It should also meet reasonable design costs and planning application fees as part of this. If these negotiations break down, the LGO said the council should consider revoking the permissions, subject to receiving a full report.