You are of course right. I was simplifying things and drawing from my experience of watching a neighbouring council in Cumbria in action. In particular, I have seen on more than one occasion a delegated VOC which, had it been part of the original application, may well have resulted in a different outcome or at least different conditions attached to the approval. As to lobbying, I once approached my District Councillor over a planning application to be told planning was "nothing to do with him" - an interesting reply given that he held the planning portfolio at the time. It made me so angry I stood against him at the next election - I didn't win but I frightened him. In my opinion, the outcome of Planning Committee can be something of a lottery but the system is very much skewed in favour of the developer.
You are quite right to say the system is entirely skewed in favour of the developer. Not least in the fact that refusals can be appealled but not approvals.
To expand on what I said before, it's worth considering what the underlying motivation is for councillors v planning officers.
Planning officers are employed by the council, currently amid lots of cuts and general funding shortages. They will have seen their teams shrink dramatically and often seen colleagues lose jobs through rounds of redundancies. So they will be acutely concerned about refusing applications which are then overturned on appeal. That commonly leads to a costs award to the applicant. So less money in the council to pay wages. This means that officers won't want to refuse applications where there are no policy issues, because they know they'll probably lose the appeal. Your solar farm example is typical of this.
Councillors are also paid by the council, but more importantly, they are voted in by local people. So their primary focus is on keeping the locals happy in order to be re-elected. Losing money in an appeal is less important to them as long as they are seen to be on the side of the locals. So if locals want a zip line because they all want jobs there, the committee will typically approve an application, irrespective of a pile of objections from hikers who live elsewhere in the country.
Isn't Town Planning fascinating eh?