Is the planning system corrupt?

Councils are become more and more unitary authorities, which means local planning will be heard at a county hub - in my case 40 miles away. Our county has already shown that they care nothing for us.
However, our entire planning team was sacked for corruption, so somebody did notice eventually. But they were also incompetent - housing was begun behind us without any warning; when we protested, they told us it was not near us; I invited them to come look; oops! But we were told we could do little because permission had been granted; we wrote to national and it was rescinded.
But it was Barratt homes so they just repeated the application to get it approved; and to get around the potential to flood, they simply lifted the foundations, and we now have a house which over looks our bungalow (something they said would never happen) and less than 20ft between the 2 buildings. Our council would never fight the big builders because of the legal costs, so we have thousands of homes on areas we KNOW flood because we watch it every winter- they just lift the foundations 2/3 ft up, so the council then have to spend huge amounts on drainage on the surrounding existing areas.

I often wonder if there are backhanders involved

Planning system well out of control.
More new proprties mean more Council tax payers? Yet the conservation rules seem archaic in some respects

Besides HMO's which are little more than the new overcrowed lodging houses.

My beef is Overseas buyers who buy blocks of brand new propeties as investments in our towns and cities.

This was kick started in the mid to late 80's with the so called, regeneration of our inner cities when they took hold. Then they were really championed and adored by the Blair Government.

Who were shown to be a bunch of arse kissing low life.

Au Revoir

👎👩‍🎓🏢💰💰💰

It's almost impossible to stop local councils building anything they decide. We and our neighbours were told that a vacated site beside our lane, owned by the council, would become a surface car park

But they built a 3-storey car park opposite us, even after we took the council to judicial review and won.

I agree with much that is already said. Where I previously lived, there was a very suspect builder putting in for planning permission for something. He was known to have made planning permission for things and then cancelled various parts of the plans all to his benefit and to the detriment of the rest of the people. So I copied the planning application and got quite a few people to join me from all over the town to be ready to jump on any changes he tried to make. Every time there was the least deviation from the original plan we went to the council about it.

He tried to "accidentally" knock into a tree with a machine, but fortunately one of our group saw it and stood by the tree phoning us all and we descended and stuck to our plan of each phoning two other people so that the crowd grew quite quickly. It did then sink into his arrogant head that we had no intention of letting him get away with anything, and he - no doubt quite begrudgingly - then had to follow the plan. We kept tabs on everything he did, making notes and taking photos right the way through.

So, I think that vigilance is going to have to be the key. If it is legal and y ou are allowed to record the meeting where the great promises are made, tape them, or if not write down what is said. Send a letter to your local paper outlining what has been said and hope they are not in league with the builder. Then as things carry on you will be able to stand up to any changes, both referring to what was said on the original planning operation, and also if you have proof that this has happened before you can also bring that to peoples attention. This way being under the public gaze, if there is any suggestion of councils or specific people letting them get away with things, you both have the proof of what was planned against what is actually happening and of course councillors can be clearly reminded that they were voted in to provide good service to ALL in the locality not just to some pal of someone.

The local paper is often your best ally. They know such things are of great interest to the local people and therefore from their point of view will sell more papers, plus giving them an angle to keep up the interest in what is happening. Once such builders realize that they are going to be watched , checked up on, and reminded of what they actually said at the planning meeting, they will probably do one of two things. Either make one decent job of a site, with the plan that they can keep referring to that site in the future. Or they finish the site asap and disappear elsewhere where they hope to continue in their dishonest way. Well if they choose the former, every time they mention road A you then reply but what about road B and C, showing just what they are up to. Good luck with any campaign you get involved in and I have every intention to carry on being that annoying old biddy who makes sure that everyone knows what is happening, until I stop breathing!!

The car park is hardly used except by skateboarders

I cost £5 million

homefarm

There are no such things as affordable homes. The minute they are sold the price goes up and they become part of the housing stock. The only way to reinstate affordable housing is to have council owned housing that CAN NOT be sold. We have major issues with this in rural areas

This is so true. Affordable homes were built by a housing association behind our house and a lot of trouble was taken to make sure that they used appropriate materials and built in a style which suited the village. Sure enough, as soon as the required time had elapsed, the residents started to sell them.
A small number of really nice four bedroomed homes were built for large families on the edge of a council estate locally and within 5 years they'd all been sold on.

I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that planning officials are bribed.

A farmer friend requested permission to build two houses on some land he owned near a main road. Refused. He sold the land shortly after, it changed hands overnight, and now, a few years later, there is a massive and still growing development, almost a new town.

It’s not always the council’s fault - near us a development of 350 houses on two sides of a country lane was refused twice by the council, the developer appealed and it went to a public inquiry. Despite the inspector actually saying that the council’s objections were reasonable, the appeal was allowed “because the country needs more houses” Our area’s yearly target of new houses has been increased by 75% by the new government, and if developers can claim this is not being met, they are likely to win any appeals. What they do is get planning permission for less desirable sites and then don’t build the houses, so when they want to build on sites that will sell better, they can claim that the targets have not been met.

It's corrupt - like more than we imagine

The two men who chopped down the Sycamore Gap were given four years in prison. Councils chop down trees up and down the country every day despite protests of local people and get away with it.

Maybe the answer is to stand for the local council and try to stop these cowboys rather than to complain and grumble about corruption.

It's the politicians who make planning decisions. They take advice from the planners who are the experts but do not have the power to force the councils or Government to follow their advice.

If the local councils are told they must allow development on Greenbelt land for example, their job is to find some to meet the latest targets.

So don't blame the planners. Blame the system but think about how you can influence the decision makers.

🙄

That is against the law I'm told. Each development has to have a ratio of affordable houses according to size of the development.

PoliticsNerd

I don't think turning an existing building into 30+ apartments is unreasonable. We have a new village ov 3,000 houses being built in the lovely countryside near us and most accept it the issues are more with the services.

I would be interested to know what the council's reply was regarding the HMO though.

I agree, a Victorian hospital is not fit for it's original use any more and realistically, it's not going to be purchased for a single-family home. Turning it into flats seems the best possible option for the building; the alternative would be razing it and building a small estate of yet more "executive homes".

... and outline planning applications allow fraudulent developers to manipulate their plans behind the veil of secrecy, brown envelopes and outright lies and inviting objections on the public access website just plays into a corrupt system.

Developers probably give backhanders LOL.

I do think that planning rules are peculiar. I once attended a planning meeting where a woman wanted to rebuild her house which had burnt down. the fire brigade had confirmed that the fire had spread very quickly due to the thatched roof and also burnt down the adjacent buildings. the lady wanted a tile/slate roof on her house. the local councillors were more concerned about how "pretty " thatches were and not the recommendations to have a less roof which burnt down so quickly. The same with applications to remove trees - the risk to human safety goes out of the window when the tree officer likes a particular variety of tree.
I know of one developer that bought several houses in our village and then built extra houses in the gardens. There is also the old trick of getting planning permission for a garage and then it is so easy to get permission to convert into an extra room.

In my area it is an understood thing that planning applications from individuals will automatically be refused. It gives extra work to the planning department and extra income for the council. There are 2 stupid refusals I know of. One was for repairs to a house which had had a fire. The other one was in an old house which had 7 different window styles, installed over a number of years. The owner wanted to install a unified style but was told to replace like with like, The house was not in a conservation area. It seems to be the old saying “ It’s not what you know it is who you know”

I’ve come to the sad conclusion that the whole bloomin’ lot are corrupt- councils, governments, you name it. They might start off with good intentions but it doesn’t seem to last.

JaneJudge

Where I live, the land owners have the same surname as most of the local councillors and as it's not a common name I suspect it's all related

Hmmm........same surname? Sounds like a spot of Local Government inbreeding going on there. Handy for manipulating planning committees.

There are stranger things in this strange world, but I'd have to go a long way to find anything much stranger than the workings of Local Government.

When I lived in Hastings public consultations were supposedly still going on regarding the building of the Jerwood Gallery when the signs "To the Jerwood Gallery" were erected!

Many large old buildings are left empty - former schools, hospitals etc. Developers buy them and apply for pp to demolish and build houses/flats.
When this is refused the buildings stand empty for a while then mysteriously catch fire and have to be demolished "for safety reasons" - so then developers reapply and invariably get their way.