| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Now virtually demolished | |
| Posted by: | Adam Beamish | |
| Date/Time: | 01/03/17 11:16:00 |
| Funny how I can go back and look at a planning application from 20-30 years ago for 50 houses or such like and the entire submission consists of little more than a form, some plans and a covering letter, and when permission was granted there were only a couple of basic restrictive conditions imposed upon the permission. Now the plethora of reports and documentation that is demanded to accompany an application is immense, and LPA's attach copious amounts of conditions to the granting of permission (often regardless of whether they are needed or not, or not recognising that relevant information has already been provided). It is the standard joke now that it is often harder to get an application validated than it is to get it approved. I'm not saying that this is necessarily wrong, although it does mean that I spend far too long thrashing out validation trivialities with LPA's than I do on writing planning statements, and any planning consultant who doesn't have an appetite for digging through legal encyclopedias, case law, appeal decisions and judgements may as well give up the profession. But I don't get, in this context, the reference to secrecy or avoidance of details. Certainly when it comes to applications, take a look at any application and if it's been validated it will be positively overflowing with details, and as has often been said the whole process has become so specialist that it does work against Joe Public who aren't suitably qualified to challenge such details, but at the same time don't want to pay appropriate specialists to act on their behalf. I do think Firestone is a rather different animal to Richmond Ice Rink. In the former, advantage was taken of the Bank Holiday weekend prior to the listing taking effect, which was a fault of the system/law. The latter I regard as a far worse situation as the LPA effectively let the developers off their obligations. |