STOGURSEY Parish Council has passed a vote of no confidence in Somerset West and Taunton Council’s planning department after claims that applications to build nearly 100 houses in the village go against the district authority’s Local Plan – and should be “chucked out.”

At the parish council’s “virtual” online meeting last Wednesday, members were told that, under the Local Plan, development in Stogursey should be limited to five new homes a year and that major housing schemes, some with outline planning permission, were “hanging like a cloud over local people”.

With two abstentions, councillors accepted a proposal by Cllr Chris Ford to send a letter expressing no confidence in the planning department’s handling of Stogursey planning applications and its interpretation of the Local Plan.

Cllr Ford said after the meeting: “There has been quite a movement in the village against these plans.

“There are planning applications awaiting decisions on nearly 100 houses, including 40 or 50 houses off the High Street, all of which are way outside the recommendations of the district council Local Plan.

“And yet they go on being under consideration for months and the district council’s planning department is giving applicants so many opportunities to answer questions about plans which should have been chucked out anyway.”

He added: “I made it clear there was no dissatisfaction with the actual planning committee but with the attitude and failure of the planning department to pay due attention to the Local Plan which sets out what is appropriate for villages like Stogursey”.

Councillors heard that schemes in the pipeline included outline planning permission for Glebe Field, south of the High Street, for at least 40 houses and Line Street which has been reduced from 70 to 30 and an ongoing controversial development at Paddons Farm.

Cllr Ford told the Free Press: “The Local Plan says that the development in primary villages, of which Stogursey is one, should be limited to five properties per year to avoid any sizeable estates springing up in green fields. And yet the planners are entertaining applications which are way outside those limits.

“If these developments are allowed, they will completely change the village. There isn’t the demand for this amount of housing from local people and there isn’t work available for incomers.”

Councillors were told that the original objection which led to the no-confidence vote stemmed from the ongoing development at Paddons Farm which involved an S101 agreement dating back to 2008 that originally stipulated the developers provided amenity land for the village and an index-linked £15,000.

This had now been discarded and a new agreement was being negotiated “behind our backs”.

Parish council chairman Cllr Chris Morgan, who as a member of the district council planning committee was one of two abstentions, said later that he supported the council’s stand over the Paddons Farm agreement and did not oppose the no-confidence vote.

He added: “Councillors thought they were not getting proper support from Somerset West and Taunton Council over what seemed to be a complete disregard for the original S106 agreement, which is more or less being torn up and a new one put forward which will be lacking in comparison.”