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by Lib Dem team on 10 March, 2011
One of the stock story types for local papers is “resident takes a stand over unreasonable planning demands from Council”. There’s an example from Stockport last week over a front door.
The tone of the stories is normally bureaucrat-bashing – the planning officers have over-reacted and should just let it go.
In this case, it’s cost the householder a few hundred pounds to get a new door. In some cases it costs a lot more. There was a case – again in Stockport – where someone had built their £500,000 house too high and was faced with knocking it down.
They have a point, and I certainly sympathise with anyone who’s found themselves in this situation accidentally.
But we have planning laws for a reason and we set certain conditions for a reason. If we start saying that people can get away with simply ignoring the planning system because they don’t like the outcome, we really do open the floodgates to every single developer just going that bit further, doing that bit more, building that bit higher, ignoring that conservation area just a little.
There is an appeals process if people disagree with the decision the Council’s made, and a lot of appeals succeed. True, it can be costly – but that’s also true for the Council. When we consider an application, we need to bear in mind that a successful appeal could cost local taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds.
So I’m pretty much on the side of the Council planning people on this one. It won’t always be the right decision, complainers may sometimes have a point and the whole system is a very long way from being perfect. But the alternative is to abandon any sort of precision in planning and let developers get away with anything which is vaguely close to what they’ve got permission for, and that seems to me to be the worse option by far.
6 Comments
This case be over the top – on the part of the lame-brain ‘civil’ servants – no surprise there mind !
Almost any effort by property owners to improve or smarten-up there Stocky’ properties should be welcomed – Stocky’ be grotty – in need of much more improvement !
Your comments would make more sense if the Conservation and Planning Officers actually got around to enforcing against important breaches
It is now 14 months since the Civic Society pointed out the breach above Car Phone Warehouse.
It has become embarrassing to be supportive of the council.
Hi Andrew,
I’ve asked the officer to update us both on progress on these enforcement issues.
Surely, when you move into a listed building you are made fully aware of the rules regarding change.
“Lame-Brained” resident here, Mr Taggart, not Planning Officer !
re: Phil Johnson. The resident represents the ‘small fry’ – an ‘easy win’ for those lame-brained ‘civil’ servants. They be unlikely to have much of a ‘struggle’ on their hands from him. Unlike the ‘big boys’ (eg – Tesco, Portwood) who will make them work for their living !
‘Civil’ servants be no different from the Nazis at Nuremberg – hiding behind their desks / duties “only following orders” !
We are a shop in Cheadle that followed planning permission guidance to the letter, consequently we look completely out of character with the rest of the village!
More fool us?