Local democracy

I have recently been involved in a campaign to prevent our county council from building a new headquarters in our community. The proposal is for a 110,000 sq ft building, mainly offices, with a council chamber, and for the county council to relocate from another area. The site is the only remaining surface car park in the area and lies within a residential part of the borough - separated from the commercial heart by a canal and a dual carriageway. The site is owned by the local borough council. It is very well used, is surrounded by houses which the glass and steel office block will dwarf - it is over 100 feet high.
The county council struck a deal with the local council whereby they would be given the site for the cost of digging out a replacement, underground car park (the site developed as offices is worth north of £11m). The county and local councils have worked hand-in-glove to progrees the proposals (it seems the local officers see a lot of civic kudos in attracting the county to the borough). The local council broke 21 of its own local plan policies in order to accommodate the proposal. There was zero consultation. When our residents' association began to object we were rebuffed at every turn (I could be more precise but am conscious of the public nature of this site); over 3,000 residents were ignored. The local authority's lawyers were used very effectively to overcome every aspect of objection.
An illustration of the council's approach: at the key planning meeting to decide the application we, the community, had to embarrass to council into allowing us to present our opposing view. The plannning officers (acting in the role of scheme advocates rather than impartial planning officers) presented their case for over one hour and were given further unlimited time to respond to our objections. In between we (the community that employs the officers) were given 17 minutes to present our case. Worse: on the seventeenth minute exactly we were stopped by the chairman of the planning committee and told that our time was up.
This is a long and complex story spread over some 18 months. The above is the tip of the proverbial iceberg. But it raises serious issues about local democracy. I grew up, as a planning student, content in the knowledge that the post-war planning system had been established to protect, in part, local communities from avaricious developers and from the worst effects of unplanned development. I have never encountered a situation where a community had to fight its own local planning authority to prevent an entirely inappropriate office development for which the council itself was the chief protagonoist.
We consulted the Government's planning referee (GOSE) and were told they could not help because the site/proposals were not sufficiently strategic. We consulted the District Auditor (over the nature of the transfer of ownership) to be told that he could do nothing. We considered a judicial review but were told this could cost £20,000. There is, it seems, no independent, public sector arbiter of such situations. Our local officers, who work with executive powers and therefore only limited control from councillors, are free to do pretty much what they wish.
I would be very interested to know if this is a very rare case, or indeed whether it is a symptom of a wider malaise. My fear is that local governance has taken a lead from the national scene and taken the view that it lies beyond democratic control - councillors come and go, but the executive officers have life-time jobs.