Outspoken Birmingham Tory councillor Len Clark is to apologise for an outburst during which he condemned the city’s Victorian Society as a bunch of “middle class idiots” out of touch with modern life.

Clark, who does not exactly have a history of admitting any failings, sounded quite distraught about the jibe when I caught up with him.

“It was the wrong thing to say, I shouldn’t have said it and I wish I had not said it,” he confessed.

His contrition will be too late, however, to absolve the city council from a potentially embarrassing confrontation with Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles over Birmingham’s approach to conserving historic buildings.

Clark’s comment was delivered at a meeting of the council’s planning committee, of which he is a member.

It was directed in frustration at the attitude of the Birmingham Victorian Society which had lodged an objection to a proposal to demolish six 19th century houses in Hagley Road and replace them with a council-sponsored retirement village.

The buildings, once fine examples of Birmingham’s Victorian roots, sit in the Barnsley Road Conservation Area and one, built in 1895, is the last surviving house designed by Arts and Crafts architect Ernest Barnsley, after whom the area is named.

But they have been allowed to deteriorate over the years to such an extent that owners Calthorpe Estates insist that the only option is to knock them down and sell the land to the ExtraCare charity where it will become the site for one of the city council’s flagship £40 million retirement villages.

Clark got his way at the planning committee, with a barnstorming speech that persuaded colleagues to approve demolition of the houses even though to do so is out of step with the council’s own Unitary Development Plan and flies in the face of advice from the city conservation officer, the conservation and heritage panel, English Heritage, the Victorian Society, Birmingham Civic Society and the council’s design review panel.

Unsurprisingly, the Victorian Society has written to the Secretary of State asking him to intervene by calling the decision in.

If Mr Pickles agrees to this, Birmingham City Council’s planning process will be subjected to intense scrutiny and, not for the first time, the local authority will have to defend itself against accusations of a cavalier attitude towards conserving old buildings.

The Planning Inspectorate, if it gets that far, will have to decide whether the planning committee was correct to conclude that the Hagley Road houses could not be saved and that the conservation area would be improved by the addition of a modern sheltered housing scheme.

Calthorpe Estates, in its defence, says it let the houses for many years on long leases and it was the responsibility of the lessees to maintain the properties, which they clearly did not do.

It is unclear the extent to which Calthorpe Estates put pressure on the leesees to fulfill their legal duty to keep the properties in a decent state of repair, but no one could argue with the fact that the dilapidated homes are in a sorry state indeed.

The Victorian Society maintains that the properties can and should be restored and incorporated into the retirement village, perhaps by keeping the facades and building at the back. This would be an expensive option, pushing up the cost to the council of the retirement village.

The key point of this dispute rests on the question of whether or not the planning committee acted as a truly independent body when deciding to sacrifice the houses, or whether it ordered in the bulldozers because members thought they had better support the council’s political leadership, which is promoting the retirement village proposal.

Each planning committee meeting begins with the chairman, Peter Douglas Osborn, reading out a little homily about the committee being a quasi-judicial body where no decisions are taken beforehand.

He’s never quite been able to explain, though, why committee members feel the need to hold political group meetings beforehand.

Victorian Society member Joe Holyoak is pointing his finger directly at council leader Mike Whitby, who has spoken out in favour of the retirement village proposal on many occasions.

Although Coun Whitby is not a member of the planning committee, Mr Holyoak feels his influence is at work behind the scenes: “We believe there has been political interference by the leader of the council in whose ward the site is.”

This is an extremely damaging allegation against Coun Whitby, particularly since Mr Holyoak appears at this stage to have no evidence to support the suggestion that the council leader put pressure on the planning committee.

Much the same comments were made, although not so openly, about controversial planning committee decisions to approve demolition of the NatWest Tower in Colmore Row and the former Bank of England building in Temple Row.

Both projects were, it was said, championed by Coun Whitby and described as absolutely vital for the economic regeneration of the city centre.

Planning committee members came under a lot of pressure to “send a message out” about Birmingham’s determination to combat the recession. They duly complied and voted for demolition, although both buildings are still standing today.

Equally, there were times when the committee dug its heels in to reject grandiose regeneration schemes, notably refusing to sanction demolition of the Central Post Office in Victoria Square and the Grand Hotel in Colmore Row.

The Hagley Road saga cannot really be compared to previous city centre conservation battles since a case for demolition can be put forward on the grounds that the properties are past saving.

Mr Pickles will only be interested in deciding whether the committee followed due process, not unsubstantiated claims of political interference.