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Contact your Councillor, MP or MEP
You may not have met them but you could consider contacting the following:
- District Councillor
- Member of Parliament (MP) for England
- Assembly Member (AM) for Wales
- Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Scotland
- Member of the European parliament (MEP)
- Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Northern Ireland.
- There may also be a Parish Council or a Town Council in England. In Scotland a
Community Council.
Dependent on the case, each of these can sometimes be a useful supporter of your
campaign.
At district council level your councillor can certainly provide an alternative
means of access to the planning officer and often act as an intermediary.
However, as elected representatives and also officials of a Council, councillors
are entitled 'to take a view'. they are politicians all too aware of their
public image in the media and aware of council policy. It is well to bear in
mind that they are as likely to have a contrary view to you as to agree with
you.
It is District Councillors who make up the planning committee membership and
determine planning applications.
You are entitled to lobby their support by writing to all of them directly
immediately prior to a committee hearing, addresses can be obtained from the
Council.
This can sometimes bring unexpected results in that a Recommendation from a
planning officer to the committee is not followed. Ideally it is better to have
made contact much earlier in the process.
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