Councillors to be stripped of powers to block planning schemes
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/planning-application-building-developer-council-btz9r5t3g
Posted by insomnimax_99
Councillors to be stripped of powers to block planning schemes
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/planning-application-building-developer-council-btz9r5t3g
Posted by insomnimax_99
13 Comments
Serious attack against Local Democracy and Local Government powers by a party that claims to champion democracy
In a perfect world councillors eould retain this privilege. But the councillors cannot be trusted to not abuse this system so now none of them get to keep the nice thing.
Democracy in general is just fucking class warfare. Yes it’s a shitty tankie take, no I don’t care.
I’m in two minds over this. I live in a village which was recently removed from the Green Belt and is absolutely full of NIMBYs. One of the things they were cheering getting planning permission revoked for recently was a mobile phone mast which would have brought 4G to the local woods which is sorely needed.
But on the other hand, large scale developers are buying up the land around here and planning to build literally thousands of houses. On it’s own, I don’t necessarily have a problem with that (other than the fact I would prefer it to happen on brown field sites which do exist nearby) but the developers should also be required to improve local infrastructure *first*, as well as be required to sort out problems they’ve caused like flooding caused by felling thousands of trees.
They also have a weird definition of “affordable”. Every new house round here seems to go on the market for 1.5 million.
The more houses that are build the better and as opposed to lots of family homes built all together have flats, smaller homes and large homes all built together along with shops, churches, school etc. Make it so you never have to walk very far to get to anywhere
My councillors shouldn’t be trusted with it anyway. Absolutely useless. The amount of green space they have gave away suddenly without a fight and probably a pay off is insane.
Read this paper and consider if we want more power concentrated in the hands of private developers. They already build shit houses now we don’t want them to get worse.
https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/tran.12501
Tldr: Government has been using crisis language to erode local planning power and give it to private companies for over 40 years.
Good – it’s not even local democracy any more it’s local gerontocracy
Mps should also have limited powers to stop schemes in their constituency that are required for the wider benefit … thinking if the green mp who objected to the overground connection of wind farm to the national grid.
New builds for everybody, screw the locals! Let the property developers have their way with this country and see how that turns out…
About time really. I say this having sat in countless planning committees and watched policy compliant applications get delayed and refused by councillors for bonkers reasons against advice that then get overturned on appeal. Some councillors are great, level headed and look at the evidence and weigh things up whereas some are just nuts and play to the gallery/objectors. I think councillors should be involved at the plan making stage but once things are allocated, it should be down to professional planning officers to decide the application.
My story regarding planning:
HS2 is ripping through our community, we now have tons of HGVs using roads never designed for them. The noise can be unbearable at times. Funny enough its pretty dam quiet on the weekends.
But to add to that, we now have planning permission thats been approved for an RDC inbetween 1 village and a town, of which the **only** access is through the village or tight town roads (parked cars). So our village will be its go to.
The agreement was that they would only have 8 HGV’s per hour from 11-5am. They’ve now put in a request for that to be removed.
So not only have they took the whole cake, they now have the planning and want to eat the whole fucking thing.
They literally haven’t even built the site, the planning specifically had this put in due to issues and they’re already trying again to get it removed. Oh, and they’ve sent some letters to residents, but none to the village. Only a single road nearby, so without them no one would know.
Our appeal time, 20 days. Not enough time to get the message around.
Honestly, we can talk about planning all we want, but the single biggest problem in this country is the fact that planners come in, plan some grand scheme but never actually improve an area.
Ye they might build an RDC, ye they might build some houses, but never schools, never doctors, never hospitals, never fix the roads, they just take take take. A big profit for them and off they fuck to let residents and the council (with no budget) fix the issues they left behind.
NIMBYs should have to pay for the land they are blocking development of. It’s that simple. That way you still have cash flow in the economy. Right now they have way too much power without having to sacrifice a penny