Derbyshire council accused of 'secrets and lies' echoing previous scandal as public inquiry begins

Long-running concerns over the proposed 423-home scheme on land known as the Wolds, off Gritstone Road, reached a head this week as the national Planning Inspectorate began its official inquiry on an appeal by developer William Davis Homes against the council’s refusal of planning permission.

In January, the council announced a climbdown, saying it would not defend its original decision at the inquiry, after an extraordinary meeting of councillors held almost entirely behind closed doors.

According to council leader Steve Flitter, the reason for excluding the public from that decisive meeting was “very strong legal advice that if we did not do this then it would weaken the case.”

But the expert advice presented at the meeting has yet to see the light of public scrutiny, and while the legal process of the inquiry was pending, councillors and officers have been restricted in their comments on what they were told and their own feelings about the matter.

That prompted a member of the public to submit a Freedom of Information request to the council, regarding both the decision to exclude the public from the meeting and “all discussions prior to the meeting. Decisions. All attendees and vote information.”

When the response arrived on Friday, March 7, it revealed that other the officially released minutes, “No other documentation is held, any advice was provided verbally.”

The published minutes of the January meeting, regarding the section held in private, simply state: “Council received a report from the Director of Place and Economy and Interim director of corporate and customer services on arrangements appertaining to the imminent public inquiry … (SUMMARY OF AN EXEMPT MINUTE).”

The FoI did yield some more detail of the legal advice used to justify shutting the public out of the meeting, saying it would “undermine the council’s ability to defend the appeal and/or in some other way compromise the council’s position in negotiations on costs or otherwise … It would inhibit the free and frank exchange of views [and] could lead to a reluctance in future to record fully such advice.”

The council’s withdrawal has effectively left it to local residents to contest the inquiry alone, arguing against the development on grounds such as road safety, traffic levels, ecological damage, harm to the town’s historic landscape and, perhaps of greatest concern, heightened flood risk for the whole community downhill.

The council later reasserted its view that “the Gritstone Road proposals would have adverse impacts on Matlock if allowed by the Planning Inspector in its current form,” but added that it had changed its position based on “unequivocal advice of technical and legal experts.”

The council will seek to secure strict planning conditions if the inspector approves the Wolds development.

The decision not to defend its position was the DDDC’s most significant concession to the developer, but the authority has also been seen to roll over on previous commitments to affordable housing on the development – now expected to contain none whatsoever.

Furthermore, residents argue the council has also accepted the developers’ effort to cut back biodiversity requirements and Section 106 funding for local infrastructure, which is now expected to be several million pounds less than the amount expected at one point, and staggered over several phases with an uncertain timeline for delivery. Residents now fear they will never receive a detailed official account of how and why decisions were taken.

Sharon Briddon, whose home backs on to the Wolds site and who addressed the inquiry on day one, said: “I’ve personally put in a formal complaint and another Freedom of Information Request asking for a list of all meetings, notes and outputs, both within the council and with its consultants and any other third party.

“The response is usually that these meetings are private due to commercial sensitivity but there should have been formal notes and minutes taken because this is a serious matter.

“I appreciate they probably can’t share everything with the public, but there should have been notes and records taken, especially of the vote at the meeting in January.”

She added: “If they’re not keeping notes and proper records about things behind closed doors, what else is going on that hasn’t been presented to the inquiry?

“If they have been having conversations they need to be transparent. There is such a wealth of public feeling about this.

“DDDC has already been pulled up for this once and made a commitment that it would never happen again.”

In 2023, a report by regional body East Midlands Councils upheld several complaints against Derbyshire Dales with regards to the Hasker Farm scandal – negotiations over an eventually abandoned deal between the council and a convicted drug dealer to create a Traveller site near Carsington Water.

The complaints upheld included issues of missing paperwork and lack of transparency.

Among the findings in the report, investigators said: “Of key concern is the extent to which members made decisions about the proposal not in formal meetings of the council, but through closed informal member briefing sessions for which no written records were made or kept.

“Members should have either made these decisions in public through formal meetings of the council or agreed to a scheme of delegation to allow officers to make them. This lack of transparency has undermined trust in the council.”

“We believe that at an operational level the council should take steps to instil a more effective culture of record keeping and note taking by officers, particularly when dealing with third parties.”

At the time of the Hasker Lane negotiations, the council was controlled politically by the Conservatives, since replaced by a coalition of Liberal Democrats, Labour and Greens.

Responding to the East Midlands Councils report at the time, Cllr Flitter said: “Transparency and governance was one of my main topics when we took over in May and that’s what I aim to try and drive this council to do, in being open, honest and above board.”

Spanning both the past and present political administrations, chief executive Paul Wilson has been in position with responsibility for day-to-day council operations.

Mr Wilson was the DDDC director of planning at the time when the Wolds was included in the Local Plan of future development sites, and is considered by residents involved to have steamrollered that process over fierce local opposition.

In response to the Hasker Lane report, DDDC produced its own document in February 2024, detailing the lessons learned and actions to be taken in future.

Among other points, the corporate leadership committed to:

• Clarify professional minute taking support of Democratic Services to decision making and other vital related meetings of the council.
• Create standards of note taking that involve third parties.
• Ensure directors and their departmental management teams are retaining file notes to provide an account of progress on key matters of council business. This is especially the case for work which deals with third parties.

The doubts now surrounding the Wolds decision-making raise the question of whether those lessons really were learned.

Former Dales MP Sarah Dines is among those asking the question, after submitting her own complaint to the council last year which she says has still produced no satisfactory response.

Ms Dines said: “My complaint relates to the professional misconduct, an appalling failure in good governance and lack of transparency at the council, professional negligence and failures in due diligence and a duty of care to councillors and council employees.

“The council simply avoided answering my complaint for over 100 days, despite a commitment to answer all complaints with ten days, and then responded ignoring the issues at the centre of my complaint. The complaint is still unanswered. I have sent several chasing emails. I have been told it is still being considered.”

She added: “There is a clear connection between the Hasker Farm scandal and the Wolds development. There has been an unbelievable lack of transparency in both cases on the part of senior council officers.

“Secret meetings, no minutes or records kept of meetings dealing with issues of clear public interest and involving huge sums of money and the bullying of councillors into not talking about what happened at the meetings are just some of the cross-overs.

“The district council is simply unfit for purpose. There has been irretrievable failure on the part of the council leadership and senior officers to be transparent and accountable in matters of pressing public interest. This will lead to more and more questions as to why?

“It is inevitable that Derbyshire Dales residents may think the worst given the Council’s appalling track record regarding the Hasker Farm scandal and the ongoing attempts to prevent the public from knowing what happened behind closed doors regarding the Wolds.”

In response to questions from the Derbyshire Times, a spokesperson for DDDC said: “Councils up and down the UK exclude the public and press from their meetings as a matter of course to discuss exempt information as set out in legislation by the Local Government Act 1972.

“On this occasion councillors voted by a majority to exclude the public and press so as not to adversely affect the course of justice of the Gritstone Road planning inquiry proceedings.

“However, notes of the debate were taken in the usual way after the public and press were excluded, and the exempt minutes were approved as a correct record by a majority of councillors at our council meeting on 3 March.

“It appears we also need to remind local people that an independent fact-finding investigation into the council's consideration of a potential permanent Traveller site at Hasker Farm did not fully uphold any of the complaints made. Six of ten complaints made by members of the Hasker Farm Committee were rejected, while the remaining four were ‘partially upheld.’

“The independent investigation, conducted by East Midlands Councils under our Complaints Procedure, rejected:

• claims of inadequate due diligence and gross professional negligence on the part of the Council

• continued commercial engagement with a known criminal

• financial concerns and significant conflicts of interest

• lack of safeguarding assessments

• unfair rejection by the Council of an alternative site

• lying by senior officers of the Council

“Furthermore, the same complaints have since been separately progressed to a higher level - the Local Government Ombudsman - and dismissed.”

They added: “We responded to Sarah Dines’ complaint against the council in September last year, apologised for the delay in our response and concluded that the subject matter of the complaint had already been adequately and independently investigated and the outcome made public.

“She has attempted to continue this conversation, which we are dealing with, but was advised back in September that she can take her complaint on to the Local Government Ombudsman if she isn't happy with our assessment.

“The ombudsman has however already dismissed a similar complaint against the council made by the Hasker Farm Committee.”

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