independent recommendations on Planning applications feel, in the words of Yogi Berra, like deja vu all over again.

The previous Government was plagued with complaints about Ministers overturning decisions by the Development Applications Board. Often these would be justified on the grounds of national interest -- for example where a hotel expansion breached zoning regulations -- and the Minister should retain the discretion to waive regulations where the national interest is served. But that discretion must be used judiciously. Too often under the old Government, it was not.

Now we have the case of Acting Environment Minister Nelson Bascome rejecting a decision by the DAB and upheld by the Independent Planning Inspector to refuse a church's expansion plans.

The fact that Environment Minister Arthur Hodgson is a member of the church -- and represented it before the DAB before he was elected to Parliament -- will invariably raise doubts about why Mr. Bascome made his decision.

Mr. Hodgson in this case did the right thing by declaring his conflict of interest and stepping aside. But the decision made by his acting replacement raises questions on whether the independent inspector process now in place is working.

Because of repeated allegations that Ministers were putting politics above principle in overturning -- or upholding -- Planning decisions, the independent inspector mechanism was brought in to allow a neutral observer to make recommendations on the cases.

It is not known how many recommendations by the inspector have been reversed by the Minister in the last year, but if there are too many, then it makes the whole exercise pointless.

The Minister should rarely overturn a decision made by the DAB and affirmed by the inspector; if it happens too often, the process's entire credibility is thrown into doubt.

Mr. Hodgson, while out of the firing line on the church application, overturned a second decision for a house in Devonshire.

Mr. Bascome said he knew that the church proposal did not breach the zoning in spite of what the DAB and the inspector said. It is not clear what Mr.

Hodgson's thinking was, although it again concerned an encroachment on woodland.

But a note stating that the Minister "knows the area'' and that "the social arguments are more persuasive than those relating to the protection of trees'' does not seem to be sufficient in overturning a decision.

A Government which believes in transparency needs to do better.