It’s Friday — so I thought I’d have a bit of harmless fun with one of the more amusing parts of EHDC’s official response to what I considered a call for reflection. That call was addressed to elected representatives and focused on repeated planning outcomes that I — and many others — view as institutionally flawed and damaging to the integrity of the local planning process. More on that in another chapter.
Anyway, I’ve broken the response down into 27 specific points. This gem is Point 13 — and I figured it was too good not to share. I hope you’ll forgive a bit of sarcasm — just this once 🙂
Experience with Tilted Balance Is Not a Badge of Honour. Someone should forward Nick Upton the memo 🙂
Framing “significant experience with tilted balance” as a strength is like someone walking into a job interview and proudly declaring: “One of my key qualifications is that I’ve been repeatedly placed on performance improvement plans.” It doesn’t signal expertise — it signals repeated failure to meet core standards.
Likewise, regular exposure to tilted balance decisions isn’t a badge of honour — it’s a symptom of persistent strategic failure. If the planning committee is now comfortable operating in this fallback mode, it raises questions not about their experience, but about the council’s inability to correct course.
Cllr Angela Glass, a councillor who has “significant experience of determining applications under the ‘tilted balance’” 🙂 and has been in office since 2011, said the following at the meeting held on Thursday, 20 March 2025:
“~Beechlands Road — I don’t know when it was built, but that was supposedly, perhaps unsustainable. I don’t know. It’s a similar distance. It was presumably virgin land, as this is. But it was built.
We’re talking about a narrow margin between the properties on that side of the road and the proposed properties on this site.
And with the tilted balance and the state we are in at the moment, I really feel — however much my heart may say that fields perhaps should not be developed — I actually think that if this were to go to appeal, we would probably lose that appeal, because I think this would be deemed to be acceptable — whether sustainable or not.
And I don’t often say that, but I really do think on this occasion that the tilted balance has to come into play.”
🚨 Why Cllr Angela Glass’s Planning Remarks Demand Scrutiny
1. Misuse of Precedent (Illegality)
“Beechlands Road… that was perhaps unsustainable… but it was built… this is a similar site…”
This implies she’s using a prior development — one she admits may not have been sustainable — as a justification for approving the current application.
📌 Why it’s a problem: You cannot lawfully rely on a flawed precedent to justify a new planning decision. Each proposal must be judged on its own merits.
Planning law is not precedent-based like case law. Each application must be determined based on current evidence, local context, and specific material considerations. Relying on past approvals — particularly those not reassessed for sustainability — creates a circular logic loop where flawed decisions justify further flawed decisions. This undermines the purpose of NPPF paragraph 11(d), which demands an up-to-date weighing of site-specific impacts and benefits.
🧑⚖️ R (Smech Properties) v Runnymede BC [2016] confirmed that planning judgment cannot lawfully be substituted with speculation or retrospective justifications based on unrelated developments.
This type of flawed reasoning erodes the safeguards embedded in NPPF Paragraph 11(d), which mandates a live, evidence-based weighing of site-specific impacts.
2. Substitution of Planning Judgment with Appeal Fear
“I think if this went to appeal, we’d probably lose… I think it would be deemed acceptable — whether sustainable or not.”
Here, she openly substitutes her statutory duty to evaluate sustainability with a speculative fear of losing an appeal.
📌 Why it matters:
This reverses the logic of NPPF Paragraph 11(d), which only permits approval when the benefits clearly and demonstrably outweigh the harms — after proper weighing of sustainability, infrastructure, local constraints, and other national policy considerations.
This isn’t just bad planning. It fits the public law definition of irrationality:
A decision made by abandoning the legal framework and replacing it with personal speculation.
The NPPF does not say, “approve unless you might lose at appeal.” It says the benefits must significantly and demonstrably outweigh the adverse impacts, measured against the development plan and the NPPF as a whole.
3. Pre-determination / Lack of Impartiality
“I don’t often say this, but the tilted balance has to come into play.”
This phrasing suggests that the “tilted balance” is being misunderstood — or misrepresented — as a green light for approval. It is not. It is a framework for weighing competing factors, not an override switch.
📌 Why it’s a problem:
Cllr Glass’s statement, delivered with rhetorical emphasis (“I don’t often say this…”), gave her comments extra weight during deliberation. But her explanation of the tilted balance was flawed — and uncorrected — during the meeting. This risks:
- Triggering a ground of procedural impropriety in a Judicial Review
- Spreading misunderstanding to less experienced councillors
- Prejudicing the overall outcome of the vote
📈 The Bigger Picture
Between 2011 and 2021, EHDC approved over 410 new dwellings in Medstead alone — a rural parish — without ever reassessing the cumulative environmental impact through a fresh Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
By comparison:
- East Hampshire’s population grew ~8.7% over that decade.
- Medstead’s growth was nearly 48% — over 5.5 times the district average.
This is not a case of isolated planning oversights. It is a systemic failure of process — compounded by flawed reasoning and unsupported assertions made by a senior councillor, on record, during decision-making.