Cllr David May, chairman, South Hams Council development management committee, writes:

Your recent correspondents Richard Howell and Chris Pring need to look more closely at the facts before putting pen to paper about the voting process at South Hams Council meetings.

A recorded vote is not taken at council meetings for every single agenda item.

Votes can be recorded if five councillors present at the meeting demand it. 

In addition, councillors do have the right to require their individual votes to be recorded in the minutes.

All councillors receive extensive training in their respective committees and as with all council committee meetings, the development management committee meets in public, with agenda reports published on our website at least five clear working days before the meeting. 

Not only is the meeting open to the public, all parties who have submitted representations on any given planning application are informed of when it is scheduled to be considered and are invited to attend and speak to the committee.

Planning applications are brought before the development management committee at the request of your elected councillors.

Each councillor takes all the relevant planning issues and the consultation responses into account and they must decide if it comes before the committee.

If it is considered that an application does not need to go before the committee, the decision is delegated to officers in consultation with local councillors.

I can only reiterate that all decisions from my committee are made in accordance with national government and local planning policies.

We give everyone the opportunity to have their say and the process is as open and transparent as can be.

Your correspondents refer to local parishes and members of the public being ignored by the committee. I can assure them that this is not the case.

We do not have a fixed view about an application before a meeting.

We consider all the information at the time of the meeting and make our decisions based on the reports and relevant information before us.

With reference to the Costa Coffee application in Totnes, your correspondents should be aware that we cannot be seen to be prejudiced in who we allow to have planning permission whether it be a local business or a major one.

I invite any members of the public to come along to a development management committee meeting and see for themselves how it operates.