According to EHDC’s response to public concerns over the Beechlands Road development, Nick Upton, Head of Planning, assures us that everything was perfectly above board. How do we know? Because he “doesn’t accept” otherwise.
Yes, in a now-immortal line, Mr Upton claims:
“Neither do I accept that members of the public weren’t adequately informed of the policy context.”
And to back this up, he notes that he personally witnessed councillors discussing the matter.
You read that right: councillors, not the public.
Apparently, public understanding is now determined by what councillors say to each other during a committee meeting, after the consultation period has ended.
Let’s unpack that, for those of us still tethered to reason:
- Members of the public are not members of the planning committee.
- A discussion during a decision meeting is not public engagement.
- And no amount of internal conversation can retroactively inform people who were left in the dark at the time they were invited to respond.
Claiming that this discussion proves the public was informed is like saying you hosted a public lecture because you explained the slides to your cat—after the lecture was cancelled.
Even more absurd is the idea that Mr Upton’s own observation of this discussion counts as valid evidence of public understanding. That’s not just circular—that’s delusional.
Public consultation is about timely, accessible information, made available before decisions are shaped—not what one officer saw in a room weeks or months later.
And rejecting a claim doesn’t prove it wrong. If we adopted that standard of truth, the scientific method would collapse.
“I don’t accept that gravity exists.”
“I don’t accept that climate change is real.”
“I don’t accept that EHDC could ever do anything less than perfectly.”
That’s not evidence. That’s wishful thinking dressed in a necktie.
The actual concern raised—linked clearly in my call for reflection: Lack of Clear Planning Guidance on EHDC Portal—was about the lack of publicly accessible, plain-English explanation of the “tilted balance” and its profound implications for planning decisions. Not whether it was buried somewhere in a lengthy officer report, and certainly not whether councillors mentioned it to one another at the last minute.
In short, saying “I saw councillors talk about it, so the public was informed” is like saying “I watched Bake Off, so I’m a qualified pastry chef.”
And if Mr Upton’s logic holds, we might as well start rewriting the history books based on his personal disbeliefs:
“Neither do I accept that Napoleon lost at Waterloo.”
Well then. Case closed.
The purpose of public consultation in planning is not merely to notify, but to equip the public with the information needed to form and express meaningful views. The Courts have made clear — particularly in R (Moseley) v Haringey LBC [2014] UKSC 56 — that consultation must not mislead, and that consultees must be informed of the true nature, consequences, and alternatives to the proposal.
Where a development is located outside the settlement boundary and relies on Paragraph 11(d) of the NPPF (‘tilted balance’), the threshold for transparency is significantly higher, due to the exceptional nature of the policy justification. In such cases, consultation should clearly explain:
- That the site is not allocated in the Local Plan;
- That the presumption against development is being reversed;
- What counts as a material consideration;
- And how the balancing test under the NPPF actually operates.
This information must not be buried in technical appendices or hidden among dozens of consultant reports. It must be made accessible, visible, and written in plain language that an ordinary resident can understand. Without this, the public cannot meaningfully participate — and consultation becomes performative rather than participatory.
In this case, neither the developer’s consultation nor the Council’s public portal provided this information in an accessible or prominent way. As a result, residents were unable to properly understand or assess the planning context, and some may have been deterred from submitting formal objections through official channels. This constitutes a failure of fairness and transparency and undermines the purpose of public engagement in the planning process.
🧠 Why Fallacious Thinking Schemata Undermine Organisational Process Integrity – And Why They Signal Defect Clusters
Fallacies are not simply poor arguments—they are indicators of flawed reasoning structures. When such flaws appear in the statements of individuals who influence planning processes, it is not enough to correct the statement. The process itself becomes suspect.
Public decision-making systems—like all human-designed systems—are prone to defect clustering.
This means that when one type of error appears, it is often not isolated. The same flawed logic or bias that created one problem is likely to have influenced multiple outputs across the same system.
⚠️ Fallacy as a Marker of Cluster Risk
If a decision-maker exhibits a fallacious thinking schema—such as:
- Substituting personal observation for public communication
- Relying on personal disbelief instead of evidence-based rebuttal
- Dismissing community experience as invalid or irrelevant
- Assuming their own oversight is equivalent to independent review
Then the planning outputs they shape or supervise—officer reports, policy applications, consultation design, harm assessments—are likely to reflect the same structural bias or error.
This is not theoretical. It follows directly from how human reasoning shapes institutional process:
A planning report is not an independent object. It is a product of reasoning. If that reasoning is faulty, the product may be too.
🧍♂️ The Specific Fallacy: Mistaking Personal Oversight for Objectivity
Nick Upton, in asserting that he “witnessed members discuss the policy context,” and therefore that the public was adequately informed, fails to recognise a fundamental principle of review:
The author or overseer of a process cannot be its neutral evaluator.
In this case, Mr Upton is not an external observer—he is the senior officer responsible for proposing the approval of the application and the supervisor of the planning process itself. His personal assurance that “sufficient understanding” occurred is therefore not independent—it is a self-validating claim made from within the system under scrutiny.
By positioning himself as both a participant in and defender of the process, he introduces a conflict of position—a fallacy of self-verification that invalidates the weight of his reasoning.
This kind of reasoning failure is especially serious when the individual:
- Wields structural influence over how decisions are formed
- Shapes procedural frameworks that define public access and input
- Guides how planning policy is interpreted and operationalised for committees and the public
When such an individual uses fallacious reasoning to defend the sufficiency of a process they themselves designed or controlled, it is procedurally circular and structurally unsound.
🧮 Why Reasoning Fallacies Spread Like Calculation Errors
Imagine someone insists that 2 × 3 = 5 and 4 × 5 = 9—but they’re also the person designing your budgeting system. You wouldn’t trust a single spreadsheet they’ve ever produced.
The problem isn’t just one wrong answer—it’s that the wrong method was used to generate every result.
It’s the same with public planning.
If fallacious reasoning is embedded in the thinking of those who shape officer reports, structure consultations, and recommend approvals, then the entire chain of decision-making is built on compromised logic.
A process led by flawed reasoning doesn’t just produce flawed conclusions—it normalises them, reinforces them, and spreads them across every decision influenced by that schema.
