Emails were sent to local Councillors, Jon Cruddas MP and Barking & Dagenham Post requesting an investigation into the Public Consultation for Befirst's major development proposal for 300 homes in 3 to 8 storey blocks on green space at Padnall Lake Marks Gate.
Despite LBBD Constitution 2020 ‘One Borough; One community; No-one left Behind’ Enables democratic participation, works relationally and is transparent', there was no transparency.
It was impossible to comment online
- It was impossible to comment on the planning application via the LBBD / Befirst website. Despite BeFirst being made aware of this prior to 17/9/20 this was not corrected until 25th Sept 2020, the day after consultation was to end.
- A handful of group members received an email on 24/9/20 from BeFirst ‘It appears that the link for customers to make representations on the Padnall Lake planning application is not available to all customers’ and ‘We have extended the public consultation period on this application by 14 days until the 11th Oct 2020’.
- Why was only the Padnall Lake planning application affected by the absence of a comments link?
- At the same time LBBD website contained an error message apologising for a technical fault causing problems with online forms being submitted. It was removed shortly after the consultation period ended on 11th Oct 2020.
The Action Group have proof that Befirst were made aware of the technical fault on 4th Sept 2020, but they only have to look at the objections they uploaded on 17th Sept 2020 to see that it was impossible to comment online.
BeFirst claim they were made aware on 24th Sep that the their online planning application pages were not working and that this was due to an update on 21st Sept.
While this proves the power of Twitter, as this site contacted Befirst on 24th, it also shows that they ignored the emails sent to them by local residents telling them of the problem prior to 17th Sept!!
Oh and just in case BeFirst continue to claim it only affected some browsers - NO! we checked on all the main browsers, the same problem was experienced on all of them.