Bristol City Council has announced a revised line up of councillors on the Development Control (South and East) Committee, that will meet on Wednesday 2nd March 2011 to consider a new application from Sainsbury's to build a supermarket in Ashton Gate.

Councillors Guy Poultney, Tim Kent, Sylvia Doubell, Trevor Blythe and Patrick Hassell will substitute for Cllrs Simon Rayner, Fi Hance, Cheryl Ann, Jos Clark, and Pete Levy (Liberal Democrats). These 5 newly-named Councillors will join Cllrs Kevin Quartley and Lesley Alexander (Conservatives), and Cllrs Doug Naysmith and Derek Pickup (Labour).

Cllr Naysmith himself is a substitute member of the committee, replacing Cllr Sean Beynon (as his season-ticket membership of Bristol City Football Club rules him out of considering an application for this land, on which the Bristol City Football stadium currently stands).

Cllr Tess Green is also a member of this committee, although she will not take her seat next Wednesday, having ruled herself out by having publicly taken a stand opposing matters relevant to the application being considered. As Cllr Green is the only Green Party member on Bristol City Council, she cannot be substituted by another colleague.

Cllrs Rayner, Hance, Ann, Clark, Levy, Beynon and Green remain the named members of this committee, and will re-take their places at future meetings considering other applications.

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It is routine for substitutions to be made on membership of development control committees - this is true for Bristol as it is for every other council with planning responsibilities. It is for each individual councillor who is a member of a development control committee to decide whether or not they can take part in each meeting - either because of their availability, or if they have a possible conflict of interest, or for any other reason personal to themselves. Each Councillor is not required to ask permission, state a reason, or provide a justification should they choose to not attend a meeting, and arrange instead with their group for a substitute to be named.

For absolute clarity, none of these 5 Councillors for whom substitutes have today been named has been dismissed, disqualified, or resigned; they have merely exercised their right to arrange for their party group to arrange suitably-trained substitutes.

All councillors are required to attend detailed training on the planning process before they become a member of a development control committee, and consider planning applications. Cllrs Guy Poultney, Tim Kent, Sylvia Doubell, Trevor Blythe and Patrick Hassell have all received such training (as have all other members of the committee).

All Councillors considering planning applications on such committees are required to declare that they have not already decided on whether to support or oppose any application before considering the evidence, listening to professional advice from officers, and weighing representations made by the public and interested parties. This requirement will apply to all members of the committee on Wednesday, old and new alike.

The law requires that councillors on these committees reach their own decisions independently, and prohibit the taking of a party line, or application of a group whip by any party, or taking a lead from their party group leader.

The respective size of different party group memberships on such committees is required to be in approximate proportion to their overall groups' party strengths on the whole Council.

The substantive chair of this committee is Cllr Beynon, and its vice-chair is Cllr Rayner. As both these Cllrs are now to be substituted, the committee meeting on Wednesday evening will start by choosing a chair for that meeting from amongst its membership present. Again, this is quite routine and unexceptional.

(CD/GK)