More local difficulties for Cameron’s Crazy Council in Croydon, as one of the Conservative candidates in the borough elections last May has lashed out at his own Tory-run council.

Richard Hough is a prominent local citizen (ie. he makes sure he’s in the local newspaper a lot) who runs a local motor repair garage in South Norwood. In May, he was one of the Conservative candidates for the South Norwood ward in the council elections.

But in the Croydon Advertiser, the same Richard Hough is strongly critical of the council’s conduct in a planning dispute, where he has been putting forward objections for the past eight years.

Hough, the owner of Autoclutch, claims his business will be forced to close if the proposals to build 11 flats and two retail units to the rear of Station Road are given the go-ahead.

According to the local paper report, Hough and other local campaigners have discovered that ratepayers’ money has been misused, paying for an independent consultant to advise the developers on one of Croydon’s longest-running planning battles.

Hough told the Advertiser: “I’m an independent person fighting this proposal and I’ve had to fork out of my own pocket to get an independent consultant to look at the plans for me.”

The latest planning application hearing has been postponed to December 9, when Hough is almost certain to bump in to some of his Croydon Tory party colleagues on the planning committee.