We have seen two worrying example of BANES officers ignoring or circumventing licencing procedures and effectively denying residents the right to have their views heard and properly considered.
Highways officers have approved the obstruction of the pavement on George Street without using the licencing procedures which would have given residents and local businesses the right to have the concerns heard. More concerning still it took the use of the Freedom of Information Act to get them to tell us and elected members what they had done.
A recent application for a street trading licence was granted by officers before the end of the statutory consultation period. This caused considerable stress to the applicant and put the licensing committee in the invidious position of risking looking as if a decision to grant was influenced more by the need to mitigate the distress caused than the merits of the application or the objections before them.
These examples are concerning in their own right but lead us to worry whether how many examples have remained undiscovered and what this all says about officers attitudes to democratic accountability.