Following the update I posted on my website last Friday, I am pleased to say that the Secretary of State, Greg Clark, has now called-in Cray Wanderers’ planning application for Flamingo Park.
Call-ins are, by nature, rare and very selective. Local planning authorities are best placed to judge the needs of the community and take decisions on planning applications, and central government does not, therefore, usually intervene. However, in extraordinary cases, and ones of particular importance, the Secretary of State has the right to call-in the application and take responsibility for the decision himself.
This is a real boost for Cray Wanderers’ application. It means that it will now get a fair and unbiased public hearing before an independent planning inspector, and would also suggest that Ministers and officials at the Department for Communities and Local Government share the concerns many of us have raised that the Mayor of London has overturned this application for the wrong reasons.
Further details of the public inquiry – at which Bromley Council will again put forward its case of why this application should be approved – will be announced by the Planning Inspectorate in due course, and I will circulate these as soon as I have them to hand. In the meantime, I will of course continue to monitor any developments very closely.