LIKE Malcolm Dawes (Letters, December 20) I was equally appalled by the performance of the planning committee on December 14.

Not only did they fail to give due consideration to their own planning policies and public representations, but they turned the agenda upside down from the start – apparently so Councillor Cattell could be fair to the latecomers and no-shows.

In so doing she was grossly unfair to the rest of us who were there or who had come specifically for their agenda item and were unable to stay for the full afternoon.

Moreover, major items such as Anston House and the Texaco development in Kingsway deserved a whole afternoon’s debate alone, such is their potential impact on this city, never mind being sandwiched into an agenda of 14 items, four of them major.

Then there is the affordable housing debacle. The council has now sent out a clear message that 13 per cent is an acceptable amount. Not that the locals are likely to get a look-in anyway.

London agents will be salivating at the prospect of all these investment properties and second homes to market, and all at the expense and ruination of our once-beautiful city.

In retrospect I wish I’d stood up and shouted “sham” and walked out in protest.

I have never attended such an unfair and biased committee meeting in my life and strongly feel it should be publicly struck from the record with all items having to be rescheduled under a new chairman who has no previous personal association with planning.

J Wilson, Brunswick Street East, Hove