Magical Planning Powers?

I was quite surprised to see this item concerning Newcastle Emlyn on the Agenda for the next Executive Board meeting as it appears that the Council have developed magical powers of prediction by selling off the Cawdor car park for retail use before the decision on the supermarket has even been made. Apparently the Town Council were equally surprised.

It appears I was not the only one to notice that something was amiss and saw this on the Newcastle Emlyn website;

"Carmarthenshire County Council is proposing to sell the public car park behind the Cawdor Garage in Newcastle Emlyn to allow the development of yet another supermarket. A decision on the sale of the car park will be made by the executive of the council before the end of July, and our elected councillors will not be consulted, although our own elected representative, Councillor Haydn Jones, has gone on the record as being in favour of the sale, and therefore of the proposed supermarket.

The council is rumoured to be looking to make £500,000 from the sale.

So this is how democracy in action works. Despite the fact that this is the most controversial planning application in the town for years and despite the fact that a very large proportion of local residents and traders oppose it, the Council is going to steam-roller it through anyway, without even first waiting for a decision from the planning committee on whether the application should be allowed or not.

The planning officers have consistently made it clear that they favour the proposed development, which has been held up by a series of annoying public bodies worried about things such as site stability, the impact on the town's creaking sewage system and the destruction of part of an adjoining Site of Special Scientific Interest. The planning officers' main justification for supporting the plan has been the recommendations made by their "independent" consultants, Nathaniel Lichfield Partnership, which also acts for Tesco and other large supermarket groups"

Link - Anti-democratic County Council want to conveniently sell Cawdor car park ahead of Planning Committee decision

Update 27th July
No surprises, decision to sell approved.
Update 15th August
I hear that the minutes of the Exec Board meeting, as is usual, bore no relation as to what was said; the gist of the car park issue was to ensure the developer would be able to sell the whole block of land (his and the council's)  to a supermarket.