Peter Viney's Blog

JULY 2024

The newspaper headlines about destroying planning laws and building over the Green Belt are disconcerting. At least Keir Starmer has a sense of irony in appointing Angela “two houses” Rayner to do this. Housing is a Deputy Prime Minister job. Prescott was given it by Blair and because of his towering ego, the Planning Inspectorate had to change its name to Office of The Deputy Prime Minister. Everything had to be printed again. How much did that cost?

I’ve had a lot to do with planning committees over a thirty year period. It’s strange that Labour seems intent on what developer-friendly Tories wanted to do for years, but were held back by existing planning laws.

Planning has a bad name. In Poole, tradesmen call Rick Stein’s expensive restaurant at Sandbanks “BCP Planning Department” because that’s where they believed the deals are done.

Let’s go into that. For several years we had a Residents Planning Committee with monthly meetings with Poole Planning. We got on well. When they were deciding on local listing, we strolled around with planning officers to give residents views. I liked what they were saying … that beauty in a building was subject to fashion, so some of the early 60s California style bungalows deserved preserving, even though highly unfashionable now. They also liked variety, and looked askance at mock Georgian styles because they were urban and our area was zoned as having a varied and semi-rural aspect.

Go back to the joke. We had frank discussions on the constant urban legends about brown envelopes stuffed with cash. Planning officers are highly qualified, and they have a good and safe job with an excellent pension. It really isn’t worth their while taking bribes. I’m not sure about the very top of the system. They complained to us that they’d refuse an application with good reason, and it would go to their boss and the planning committee and get approved. On the whole, it would be far easier for a developer to influence several elected officials (on meagre expenses) than a well-paid professional. There is not much you can do with a large sum in used twenties. You can’t bank it. There are tales of councillors buying a flat from a prominent developer for instance. Who sets the price?  

Planning officers do an important job. If you attend a planning meeting you have to sit through all the other submissions. A standard one is a company wishing to build a block of retirement flats, let’s not name them, but they will submit a plan for 12 storey block with 72 flats and 30 parking places. There was laughter at a meeting when they said the block was restricted to over-60’s so they wouldn’t need parking. Refused. Three months later, it’s a ten storey block. Refused. Then next is an eight storey block. Refused. Yet again the planning officers point out that the blocks of flats in the same road are a maximum of six storeys high. So then the next submission is seven storeys, refused. Appeal to the Planning Inspectorate, and finally passed. We had that where a nearby plot wanted to demolish a single storey bungalow and build to four storeys. They eventually got two storeys to match the area.

For us, most of the time the villains were the Planning Inspectorate in Bristol. Developers appeal against refusals. Time and time again, the Planning Inspectorate over-rule the local authority planners and local residents and pass plans. That’s been happening for thirty years in my experience.

In our road,  an architect applied to build an identical modern single storey building identical to the existing one, but in the front garden. It was needed to store his plans and for guests. Everyone objected at infilling. The planning officers refused it twice. The elected committee supported their decision. He appealed to Bristol inspectorate. 120 residents and all three local councillors were there protesting when the inspector arrived. We were told none of us could address the inspector, who disappeared into the existing building with the applicant for twenty minutes. He came out went back to Bristol and overturned the council’s refusal. It was built. Guess what? The week it was finished it was For Sale as a separate building. The council’s provision against splitting the plot was also overturned. The planning department locally was not at fault. The government inspectorate was. Planning is a local issue, NOT a national one.

I’ve attended planning meetings. The worse were the Lib Dems whose meek and sycophantic mantra was ‘we agree with whatever the local officials say.’ Some Conservatives were valiant defenders of residents too, as was the single Labour member.

The big battle was a Vodafone mast. It was to be placed right outside a neighbour’s house, yards away from the kids bedroom window. We made models, I spoke at the meeting. That was fun. The planning dept was in favour (the boss). I spoke against. He stood up for his speech, so I stood to start mine. I was ordered to sit down. Members of the public must speak from a sitting position out of respect for the committee. I refused. I pointed out I had written a book on Communication Skills, and standing gave the speaker added authority, so why should he stand while I sat?  I also said I’d never heard that sitting in someone’s presence was more respectful than standing. The Lib Dems looked most uncomfortable. The Tory chairman was so furious with me that his toupee partly slipped off. The one Labour member chipped in, ‘He’s quite right. Let him stand.’ Then the other Tories (who patently loathed the chairman) all agreed. We won after the Head of Planning said there was absolutely no evidence that phone masts were any danger whatsoever, and that indeed, they’d placed them in school playgrounds.
I immediately said, ‘Then let’s place it on the town hall roof.’
He retorted, ‘We can’t do that! What about the health and safety of our local government employees!’

The public and committee members roared with laughter. The chairman banged his gavel. It went to the vote. Phone mast refused.

You see, that’s democracy. Local democracy. Are they intending to ride roughshod over it?

It’s not simple.

What about Conservation areas?

What about listed buildings?

What about Tree Preservation orders?

What about environment, especially bats. Bats really hold up developments.

We wanted to demolish a leaking conservatory built in 1996 and it had rising damp too. We wanted to build a more solid replacement. We had to spend thousands on bat surveys. Yes, I’ve read all the bat legislation. You can shoot a muntjac deer. You can’t even shine a light near a bat roost.  Mostly if disturbed they go elsewhere. At one point I said I would happily donate £3000 to a local homeless charity for HUMANS rather than have more bat surveys. We had three dusk and dawn ones. The charge was ridiculous. £850 a night including “use of camera.” I pointed out our £60 security camera picked up moths and recorded them … yet had never picked up a bat. It turned out that they needed two surveyors for every visit because they only employed women, and health and safety would not permit a lone woman to do a survey at 4.30 a.m. My suggestion that they might employ a male surveyor was met with an explanation that it would be sexist to choose the gender of the surveyor.

So are the new government going to overturn all the environmental protection for bats? They’ll have to. It is daft that they have greater protection than other rodents, let alone other animals.

Then there’s tree preservation orders in many areas. They’ll have to get rid of them. Perhaps sack all the tree officers? Incidentally that would need a bat survey per tree, AND developers would not be allowed to work during the bird nesting season. That’s a standard provision. Or will they change that too?

But has there been no house building? (from a post two weeks ago)

So apparently the first move of the next government will be to over-ride green belt rules to push housebuilding. Odd. It’s been happening on an unprecedented scale for the last few years. In my driving around the South, I pass very large new housing estates being built everywhere … Parley Cross just north of Bournemouth, all around Wimborne, north of Shaftesbury, the fields near Warminster, Sturminster Marshall, north of Basingstoke, Alderholt near Fordingbridge. Then brownfield sites in Poole.

These are often against strong local protests. The one at Alderholt is on a narrow country lane. There is one shop in the village. Everyone was against it. There seems little infrastructure planning in some, though Shaftesbury has a large new roundabout system. In Poole, offices are being converted into several hundred small flats with no parking, but there will be bike sheds (a Lib Dem council hallmark). The streets around are late Victorian terraces, packed with parked cars. Will these several hundred new residents really have no cars at all? Or will they try to cram into the neighbouring streets?

Then Wimborne is large for a small town, but the only pharmacy is at the GP Surgery. In these other rural places, where will people find jobs? Are the schools, doctors, dentists, roads going to be there for the extra population on the edge of these smaller rural towns? So in spite of Angela Rayner saying housebuilding is not happening, it already is on a large scale. Developers with deep pockets can get past rules anyway.

Planning has to be local. Don’t bother to say NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard), because we all deserve to have a say in what might happen in our back yards.