A VETERAN planning councillor has issued a damning indictment of Thurrock Council's administrative process and accused officers of 'kicking items into the long grass because they don't like our decisions'.

Cllr Gerard Rice was speaking at this evening's (Thursday, 7 January) planning committee meeting and said bureaucracy was stopping the handover of a new £5 million hospice to St Luke's Hospice.

Building the hospice was the driving force behind planning permission controversially being given for a large new housing estate off Lower Dunton Road but Cllr Rice says delays by the council and its legal representatives in preparing paperwork was causing an unacceptable delay.

Cllr Rice said he and other councillors had been contacted by agents for a number of local planning decisions, including the controversial approval of a homebuilding project on Little Thurrock Marshes and it seemed a pattern was being established.

Speaking about the hospice he said: "It cost £5.1 million to build and it cannot be handed over until our solicitor accepts the Section 106 agreement. We are talking almost a year, it shouldn't take a year to sort these problems out.

"I am a bit concerned about these applications, which have not gone off to the secretary of state for approval.

"If we are employing a solicitor not capable of doing the work we need to find another solicitor. These are being kicked into the long grass because officers do not like the decisions going against them. If we have a problem with our solicitor we need to replace them.

"We have a chief executive, Lyn Carpenter, who tells us we are open for business and here we are a year later and this has not been completed. Our whole infrastructure does not seem to be right. We need to do something about it.

"This hospice is sitting there like a ghost and they are having to employ people to guard it against vandals!"

Chair of the meeting, Cllr Tom Kelly, attempted to defend the council and said: "I remember this being passed about five years ago. It's taken a very long time, five years for them to build it, now they are complaining about our admin systems. There are issues of time on both sides here."

And he appeared to put the blame back on committee members for passing controversial applications, saying: "These decisions way outside the boundaries of acceptability so they clog up the systems."

Cllr Angela Lawrence took up Cllr Rice's argument suggesting the council was taking up too much development work to process. "Our officers work very hard but have they got too much to do?" she asked.

And he appeared to put the blame back on committee members for passing controversial applications, saying: "These decisions way outside the boundaries of acceptability so they clog up the systems."

Cllr Angela Lawrence took up Cllr Rice's argument suggesting the council was taking up too much development work to process. "Our officers work very hard but have they got too much to do?" she asked.