THEY KNEW, THEY ALL KNEW, AND THEY DID NOTHING

The Importance of an Honest, Efficient Planning Authority

The warning light was flashing. Nobody appears to have reached for the brake pedal.

There comes a point in an investigation when the paperwork stops being paperwork. Dates begin to connect. Emails acquire significance. Names keep appearing. Something said in an official report begins to sit rather awkwardly beside what was being said privately inside the organisation months earlier. Eventually the documents stop whispering. They start shouting.

For months, The Alternative Council has been examining what happened at the Buttercup View development at Mile Bank Road, Whitchurch. What began as concerns about drainage has developed into something far more troubling: a documentary trail showing that serious concerns about drainage, disputed land, Welsh Water and the handling of a planning application were circulating amongst senior Shropshire Council officers and elected members before the application was determined.

On 24 September 2026, approximately 93 days after The Alternative Council submitted an Environmental Information Regulations request, Shropshire Council finally disclosed correspondence we had asked to see. Among it was an email dated 1 September 2025. It is not particularly long. It does not need to be. Sometimes a few paragraphs can achieve what hundreds of pages of carefully upholstered council prose somehow fail to manage. They tell you who knew. And when.

THE EMAIL THEY REALLY DIDN’T NEED US TO FIND

The author was Councillor Julian Dean, councillor for Porthill and Chairman of Shropshire Council’s Northern Planning Committee. Dean was not an objector standing outside the system complaining about it. He was sitting inside it.

His email concerned planning application 25/01781/VAR at Mile Bank Road, Whitchurch, and what he wrote should have caused somebody, somewhere, to stop and ask whether proceeding was really such a splendid idea. Dean referred to “considerable controversy” surrounding the application. He referred to long-standing disputes involving land and drainage, specifically drew attention to Welsh Water’s comments and warned of a serious risk of reputational damage to Shropshire Council’s planning function. He considered that the issues required resolution before the application was determined and recorded that he had been asked to seek committee consideration.

This was not The Alternative Council arriving months later with hindsight and a magnifying glass. This was the Chairman of Northern Planning Committee raising concerns three months before approval.

Email from Councillor Julian Dean, disclosed by Shropshire Council on 24 September 2026.

Dean’s email went to Charlotte Morrison, then Interim Planning and Development Services Manager. It went to Councillor Andy Hall, Shropshire Councillor for Whitchurch North. It went to Councillor David Walker, Shropshire Councillor for Whittington and Portfolio Holder for Planning. It was copied to Councillor Mark Owen, Shropshire Councillor for Oswestry South East and a member of Northern Planning Committee. It was also copied to Tim Collard, then Shropshire Council’s Service Director for Legal, Governance and Planning and Monitoring Officer.

Then Charlotte Morrison forwarded Julian Dean’s email to Mark Perry, the planning case officer. On the same day. Not after determination. Not weeks later. Not after somebody stumbled across it during an archaeological excavation of the Council’s email archive. The same day.

The Chairman knew.

Planning management knew.

The Portfolio Holder knew.

The local councillor knew.

Another Planning Committee member knew.

The Monitoring Officer knew.

And the case officer knew.

That is quite a distribution list.

Perhaps this is what Shropshire Council means by joined-up government. Everybody was connected. Apparently nobody could find the brake pedal.

The named email trail at the centre of the story.

WELSH WATER HAD ALREADY RAISED THE ALARM

The Dean email did not arise from gossip, rumour or somebody’s dislike of a housing development. Welsh Water had already written to Shropshire Council on 23 June 2025 and said something extraordinarily important: it had not been consulted on the earlier Reserved Matters application.

Welsh Water also considered immediate capacity in the public sewerage system unlikely to be sufficient without mitigation and requested a current foul-water drainage scheme informed by hydraulic assessment. Then, on 4 September 2025, only three days after Dean’s email, Welsh Water issued a holding response. It was still awaiting foul and surface-water information and expressly asked to be re-consulted when that information became available.

By this stage the position should have been impossible to misunderstand. The water company had said it had not been consulted previously, it now had concerns, it wanted more information and it wanted to be consulted again. A planning authority possessing a functioning sense of self-preservation might have regarded that as a useful moment to stop. Apparently not.

THEN EVEN THE DRAWINGS STARTED DISAGREEING

Five days after Welsh Water’s holding response, on 9 September 2025, Mark Perry was discussing the drainage arrangements with Tom Harper of WSP, the drainage reviewer involved in the application.

Perry had queried differences around the attenuation arrangement. Harper accepted that the plans were different. He nevertheless considered the overall strategy unchanged, but that conclusion relied partly upon assumptions and he suggested seeking confirmation from the developer or amending the drawing to remove ambiguity.

That exchange matters because it destroys any comfortable impression that, by September, everything technical had been neatly tied up. It hadn’t. Welsh Water wanted further information. Julian Dean wanted concerns resolved before determination. The Council’s case officer was questioning differing drainage arrangements and the drainage reviewer was acknowledging those differences while relying partly upon assumptions.

Nothing to worry about then. Carry on. Perhaps put the kettle on and open another bag of Hobnobs.

AND STILL THE APPLICATION MOVED FORWARD

The chronology thereafter is striking precisely because it is so simple. Welsh Water raised its concerns in June. Dean raised his concerns on 1 September and Morrison forwarded them to Perry that same day. Welsh Water issued its holding response on 4 September. Perry and Tom Harper were discussing differing drainage arrangements on 9 September.

Then, on 25 November 2025, the final Strategic Drainage Plan P2 was revised. Shropshire Council received it on 26 November. Just six days later, on 2 December 2025, planning application 25/01781/VAR was granted under delegated powers. That sequence does not need embellishment. The dates are quite theatrical enough.

THE PERRY PARADOX

Then we reach Mark Perry’s officer report. The report records Welsh Water’s sewer-capacity concern, its requested foul-water drainage condition and its later holding response. Yet the report then concludes that the relevant drainage details had already been provided at Reserved Matters stage, making it unnecessary to require them again.

There is one rather spectacular problem with that.

Welsh Water had already told Shropshire Council that it had not been consulted at Reserved Matters stage.

Strip away the planning language and the problem becomes beautifully simple. Welsh Water says it wasn’t consulted. It says it has concerns. It asks for further information and re-consultation.

The subsequent officer reasoning effectively says the matter had already been dealt with previously.

At the stage when Welsh Water says nobody consulted them.

Perhaps Shropshire Council has pioneered telepathic statutory consultation. It would certainly reduce the email traffic.

“NO CONTRARY OPINIONS”

Then comes a sentence in the officer report which has become rather more interesting since the emails emerged: “No contrary opinions have been received that would require determination by committee.”

By then, Julian Dean had already described considerable controversy surrounding the application, raised drainage and disputed-land concerns, warned of possible reputational damage to the Council’s planning function and suggested delaying determination until the issues were resolved. And Mark Perry had received that warning.

There may be a perfectly technical constitutional argument about whether Dean’s email satisfied whatever formal procedure was required to call the application before committee. That question remains to be established. But “there was no valid formal call-in” is one thing. “No contrary opinion existed” is something altogether different.

A contrary opinion plainly existed. It belonged to the Chairman of Northern Planning Committee. If that does not count as contrary opinion, perhaps Shropshire Council might publish a glossary. The rest of us are evidently using English incorrectly.

THEN THE ALTERNATIVE COUNCIL ASKED TO SEE THE RECORDS

On 23 June 2026, The Alternative Council submitted an Environmental Information Regulations request specifically seeking the records surrounding Dean’s concerns.

We did not simply ask for one convenient email. We asked for the correspondence and responses, internal comments and case records, and evidence showing whether delaying determination or referring the application to Northern Planning Committee had been considered. We also sought records showing whether legal advice or Monitoring Officer advice had been obtained and whether the drainage, disputed-land and Welsh Water issues had been addressed before determination.

Shropshire Council finally responded on 24 September 2026. Charlotte Morrison apologised for the delay. Approximately 93 days had passed. The Dean email itself had existed for almost thirteen months. Apparently transparency becomes considerably easier once the horse has left the stable, crossed the county boundary and started a new life.

The Alternative Council’s EIR request of 23 June 2026

The Alternative Council’s EIR request of 23 June 2026

AND NOW WE COME TO THE WORD NOBODY WANTS TO USE

Conspiracy. It is an emotive word, and it has a specific legal meaning. The Alternative Council is not claiming that a criminal conspiracy has already been proved. It hasn’t.

But there is a world of difference between declaring people guilty and deciding that documentary evidence has become serious enough to warrant independent investigation.

The evidence now shows serious concerns moving through planning management, elected members, the then Monitoring Officer and the case officer before determination. It shows Welsh Water’s position. It shows Dean’s warning. It shows uncertainty over drainage drawings. And it shows that the application proceeded to delegated approval regardless.

What we cannot presently establish from those documents alone is why. Perhaps this was a succession of poor decisions. Perhaps institutional self-protection played a part. Perhaps there was coordination which deserves closer examination. Perhaps there is another explanation which has yet to emerge.

But there comes a point where asking Shropshire Council to investigate Shropshire Council starts to resemble asking the pupil to mark his own examination paper and then congratulating him on the result.

The Alternative Council can obtain documents, compare them, expose contradictions and publish what they show. We cannot compel witnesses, seize electronic material, recover deleted communications or establish whether apparently separate decisions were actually coordinated.

Those are investigative powers. And it is increasingly difficult to see why the documentary package should not be placed before the police so that they, rather than the Council or The Alternative Council, can decide whether there is anything warranting criminal investigation. The evidence does not remove the need for an investigation. It is the reason for one. Perhaps the missing ingredient now is simply the will.

AND THEN THERE IS THE MISSING DOCUMENT

As though the events of 2025 were not uncomfortable enough, the earlier Reserved Matters history contains another curiosity.

Digital-audit material supplied to The Alternative Council records that Shropshire Council received two drainage documents on 2 August 2022, apparently carrying the same drawing reference, 0300 Rev P02. One was described as “DRAINAGE STRATEGY PLAN” and the other as “Drainage Strategy Plan 2.”

The audit material records the second document entering the Council system on 10 October 2022 at 09:34, but not being published. It also indicates that it was subsequently used or referenced in the officer-report process. The first plan eventually appeared on the public planning portal following challenge; the second apparently did not.

The Alternative Council has been told that this second version contains a materially different boundary which may affect responsibility for a drain. We have not yet seen that document, so we do not present that allegation as established fact.

But the audit trail says the document existed. It says Shropshire Council received it. It says it entered the system. And the public still cannot see it. A planning authority desperate to reassure the public might consider locating its own planning document. Admittedly, expectations are becoming terribly demanding.

The document that apparently existed. Until the public wanted to see it.

WHAT HAPPENED AFTER JULIAN DEAN PRESSED SEND?

On 24 September 2026, The Alternative Council sent Councillor Julian Dean the evidence review setting out these concerns. He acknowledged receipt. At the time of writing, he has not provided a substantive response.

That matters because Dean was not standing outside this process after the event. He identified the concerns beforehand. He warned about them. He suggested delay. His warning reached the relevant officers. And then the application was approved.

The public is entitled to know what happened between Send and Approve.

THE IMPORTANCE OF AN HONEST, EFFICIENT PLANNING AUTHORITY

Planning is not bureaucratic wallpaper. Planning decisions can create or destroy enormous amounts of value. They affect developers, landowners, neighbours and the people who eventually buy the homes. They can determine who pays for roads, drains, sewers and private infrastructure for decades after the committee papers have been archived and the people responsible have moved on.

That is why the integrity of the planning process matters. An honest and efficient planning authority does not have to be perfect. Human beings managed to make perfection impractical some time ago. But it does have to be accountable.

The public has to be able to trust that statutory consultees will be heard, warnings will be taken seriously, inconvenient evidence will not simply be absorbed into the machinery and contentious decisions will be supported by reasoning capable of surviving daylight.

The Alternative Council started examining Buttercup View because of questions over drainage and planning. What has emerged is now about something considerably larger. It is about what happens when serious warnings reach people with the power to act.

Maybe this was incompetence. Maybe it was institutional self-protection. Maybe something more serious happened. Readers can reach their own conclusions about that.

But one thing has become very difficult to argue away.

THEY KNEW.

THEY ALL KNEW.

AND THE APPLICATION WAS APPROVED ANYWAY.

The question is no longer whether the warnings existed.

Shropshire Council’s own documents answer that.

The question is what was done with those warnings, why, and whether someone independent should now find out.

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THE ALTERNATIVE COUNCIL — WATCH THE STORY

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