IT'S odd the way things come home to roost. A couple of years ago the House of Lords was discussing new planning laws which eventually became the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004.

There was a big argument over the Local Plans which councils have to adopt which then provide the framework for making decisions on planning applications.

These plans are behind the planning officer's unwelcome mantra "you councillors might think it's a bad proposal but you have to pass it because it is line with the Local Plan and there are no reasons for turning it down".

Members of the public are often not amused by this. They are asked for their views and take the trouble to give them, even to come to meetings to put them forward in person.

Then they are told that their views don't count because of what is laid down in a document they have never previously heard of.

So what goes into the Local Plan in each district is important. It ought to be the subject of a lot of local debate.

And the councillors who make the decisions on planning applications ought to 'own' the plan in every sense.

But under the new regime in these new laws it's not altogether like that, as we have just found out in Pendle where the new Local Plan will be adopted at the council meeting on Thursday.

Last year there was a long public inquiry at Nelson town hall. The Inspector's report, several hundred pages of recommendations and background stuff, includes changes to what the council wanted.

Except they are not recommendations. They look like recommendations and they are called recommendations but they are actually instructions.

This is where this new law comes in. Until last year the inspector's recommendations from Local Plan inquiries were just that.

But now New Labour says that elected councillors cannot be trusted to make these decisions.

Both Liberal Democrats and Tories in the Lords argued against this change. We trudged through the division lobbies in support of local democracy. But the Government got its way.

And so Pendle councillors' debates on the inspector's 'recommendations' are something of a farce. The New Labour chickens are home to roost with a vengeance.

At the same time, the same New Labour Government worries over why too few people bother to come out to vote in council elections!