It's unfortunate the way some of the process was reported and maybe the club were content because they knew fans would be cross with the councils.
Both the city and county had told Forest they were in full support of their ground expansion, but they couldn't agree to the club's proposal to permanently close lanes on Trent Bridge. They expected the club to remove this element before the application was submitted to Rushcliffe - it wasn't.
The councils had a deadline by which they had to submit their formal response to the planning committee ahead of the meeting. Neither could approve while the full lane-closure proposal remained in the papers.
I'm also fairly sure the club's safety certificate insists that the ground can be fully evacuated in seven or eight minutes in the event of an emergency. Lots of fan chatter scoffing at the idea of a footbridge but these considerations have to be made when you're talking about, in time, potentially 20,000 more people on match days pouring out towards the river.
Councils represent everyone in their constituent area, not just Forest fans who are, naturally, desperate for this to happen and frustrated by perceived barriers being put in place by standard planning laws and scrutiny in relation to developments on this scale.