We’ve had a refresher training session on taking planning decisions, and I thought it would be useful to share a list of things which can and can’t be taken into account in planning decisions.
As you may know, planning decisions cannot currently be taken on whether a development is popular or whether we as councillors happen to think it’s a good idea. They’re decided on whether they comply with the rules: with planning law and the Council’s planning policy.
Issues that can normally be taken into account
- Government policy
- The Local Plan, including supplementary planning documents
- Consultee responses
- overshadowing
- overlooking or loss of privacy
- adequate parking and servicing
- overbearing nature of the proposal
- loss of trees
- loss of ecological habitats
- effect on listed buildings, historic parks and gardens and Conservation Areas.
- access or highways safety
- traffic generation
- noise and disturbance from the scheme
- disturbance from smells
- public visual amenity, but not loss of private individual’s view
- flood risk
- cumulative impact
- local economy
- previous similar decisions
- affordable housing
- site history
- layout, density, design, appearance and character
- fear of crime
The following cannot normally be considered, even though they may be entirely sensible and reasonable concerns.
- loss of value to individual property (we can’t refuse an application because your house might lose value as a result)
- competition (we can’t refuse because your business might do worse as a result)
- loss of view
- boundary disputes including encroachment of foundations (there are other routes to settle such disputes, but it isn’t done through the planning process).
- private covenants or agreements (again, these may be enforceable in other ways but not through the planning process)
- the applicant’s personal conduct or history (even if you know the applicant’s a crook who’s done a pile of dodgy things in the past, you can’t allow that to count against the application).
- the applicant’s motives
- potential profit for the applicant or from the application
- private rights to light (though an overbearing development that blocks out light can be rejected in some situations)
- private rights to way/access (there are other routes to settle disputes about these).
- damage to property (we can’t reject an application because you think it might damage your property, though if it did damage your property, you’d have other routes to take action).
- disruption during any construction phase
- work already done
- loss of trade or competitors
- age, health, status or background
- work patterns of the objector
- time taken to do the work
- capacity of private drains
- building or structural techniques (there are other routes to deal with those)
- alcohol or gaming licences (there are other routes to deal with those)
- matters covered by other legislation
It’s also worth remembering that having planning permission does not mean you can develop, nor does it mean you have to develop.
It’s entirely legal (and common) to apply for planning permission on property you don’t own. If you want to apply for permission to build an extension on my house, you can do and the fact that you don’t own it can’t be held against you. If, however, your builders turn up while I still own it, they’ll be told just where to go!
Note: I claim no planning expertise and this should be taken as a general guide. If you have queries, the best option is to speak to the planning professionals in your local authority. They may not be able to give you the answer you want to hear, but they will answer your questions.
Planning is usually a thorny issue.
Either you want it, or you are against it. Either way it’s not always…
a) easy to get an application approved
b) easy to get one stopped.
I offer this in the hope it will help others.
This is pretty obvious, but the developer in my case did not do this. I’d advise anyone seeking to extend or perhaps knock down and rebuild to approach their neighbours in the same street and any that the build will affect in other streets. Ask them for their support. Some work up front will go a long way. You’ll find out what the potential issues might be and it gives you the opportunity to adjust your plans before you submit them. Who knows, you might even persuade a neighbour to write a letter in support of your application.
As Iian points out, not all issues neighbours have will stop an application.
I got together with my neighbours and we objected to a planning application and got it stopped. In fact we did the same to a second application on the same land.
What was eventually passed is not good for me but it’s far better than it would have been had we not objected.
Frankly, there was always going to be a development, or knock down and re build, on this land.
One reason the initial plan for thirteen houses was stopped was the effect on the public when viewed from Gatley Carrs. This is known by the planners as “Visual amenity”. This will probably not apply to many applications. Another reason was that the development was “Not in keeping with the character of existing properties”. I also believe that developers have to provide sufficient car parking space for each property that want to build.
I am very grateful for all the help and support from neighbours who would have been less affected but by all coming together it raised a much louder voice which I’m convinced got the attention of our MP more than a single objector would have done. Go see your MP their surgeries are listed. At the time our MP was Patsy Calton and much thanks goes to her and our local councillor.
The planning department said that the number of objectors did not matter. Each case was judged on its own merits and even if just one person objected, it would still have the same discipline applied to it. That may be, but councils and their officers do take some notice of their MP’s.
Another point of interest is that we paid for advice from a company specialising in these matters.
An alomst throw away comment from them was that because our council and MP were from the same party that this would help us as they would all want to work together. The intimation being that a Tory or Labour MP with a Lib-Dem council (it was before the current administration) would not easily cooperate with each other and it would become a point scoring exercise that would not work in our favour. I expect that Iian will say that’s not the case, but those were the words coming from a company that has been in business for almost 300 years.
I wish you all the best in your efforts to improve your properties and the same to those, who like me and my neighbours, would have been adversely affected by a poorly conceived development.
Finally, a note on another matter.
Watch out “they” want to put fluoride in our water. A raw industrial waste product contaminated with many other highly toxic substances including cancer producing ones.
I’ve researched it and there’s actually no strong evidence either way that it helps teeth in adults or in children. It’s in the interest of dentists to promote it. The resultant teeth staining it’s guaranteed to give some of you and your children, will boost their incomes. OK, so they not all bad people, just ones that have not taken the counter arguments into account and who believe the rubbish spouted by the “Pro” brigade largely backed by the same industrial concerns who need to get rid of their waste products that they are not allowed to dump at sea or in land fills, but oddly they can make us drink them! If it was not so serious it would make you laugh. According to what I’ve read it delays the eruption of teeth in 5 year olds, so any study that states it helps this age group is highly suspect as they have less teeth to go bad. Because it is, according EU definition, a medication, there is a very strong argument that we should not all be subjected to it against our will. What doctor in their right mind would give you a medicine and say, “Take as much you like and don’t worry even though it has a cumulative effect I do not need to know exactly how much of this you already take in other medicines, just take as much as you want to”. The answer is one who should be struck off.
Despite (coalition) government changes to make the Planning guidance simpler, the process is still mired in complex bureaucracy and politics.
Locals (to a perceived unsuitable development) form groups to object, but rarely manage to sway the Planning Committee, who often ‘feel’ one way or the other about development. There’s guidance and ‘rules’ but they’re often open to such wide interpretation that it’s hard to know which way something’s going to go. Everyone tries to blame everyone else, especially since in the last twenty years or so the process has become very much more ‘consultative’. We’d like to think this make it more democratic, but it doesn’t really – if you ask an arboriculturist about removal of a tree they’ll say “it should be kept”. If you ask an environmentalist about protected species they’ll do their best to find indicators of their existence. But even that may or may not decide the proposal. Then there’s the appeal process and then it can even go to the courts. Each time a different decision, often overturning that previously made.
What’s not being considered in this is the cost. Developers are seen as being ‘greedy’. They’re not necessarily. But as they shoulder these costs they will have to work them into the end sale price of the property. And, like it or not, if we have policies which support a growing population and our house prices are propped up by demand (because there aren’t enough) something, somewhere’s gotta give. I don’t see that it’s working for anyone much at the moment.
I did suggest to Mr Pickles, when he was in charge of such things, that a ‘democratic’ way out would be to charge those communities which didn’t want development a higher council tax to help fund housing in those communities that did want it. It makes for a ghettoised society, but, for good or bad, it has always been thus. My suggestion just made it more explicit and might allow projects to ‘get on with it’ and retain others’ environment, which also seems critical.
As LibDems you no doubt think that money shouldn’t dictate. No, of course it shouldn’t. But it’s not an ideal world. Those that fight planning often never consider that it’s their children or grandchildren’s chances for decent housing that they’re fighting against. We seem to have become a “No” generation, meaning that “you can’t have anything and neither can anyone else”. We should ban “No” and force it to be replaced by “No, not here, but here instead”.