Well, I am all in favour of the rule of the law, of course. We are all equal under the law, aren't we? Or are we? I was a member of a borough council for over 25 years, and I found out a lot about planning law during that time.
To summarise - anyone who wanted a small improvement had to jump through various hoops when applying for planning permission, and it took ages, and was quite often turned down. However, builders usually gained permission to erect houses, even if their request did not fit in with the local borough plan. The reason, I found out, eventually, was that HM government had (I think it was in Planning Guidance Note 3) decided that it should be assumed that businesses should be granted permission unless there was very good reason not to. This decision was taken a lot more seriously by planning officers than was any views expressed by mere elected members.
In other words, whilst domestic applicants for planning permission had to prove that they would cause no inconvenience to anyone, people that opposed business applicants had to prove that the application would make life more or less impossible. If they did that, successfully, so that the council turned down an application, the businesses would appeal to the Secretary of State, who would then grant the permission. And the council would have to pay costs.
I found out a bit about travellers when I was on the Council too. It seemed that no-one objected to travellers, but no-one wanted them anywhere near to them. There is (or was then) a legal duty on councils to provide sites for travellers, but it was a duty that was impossible to carry out because no-one wanted travellers near them, and whoever was the councillor for the areas with a proposed site took care to ensure that the site was found unsuitable.
The result, of course, was that travellers really did have to travel in my borough, and could only stay in one place long enough to be evicted (although that sometimes took quite a while).
The trouble with the rule of law is that the laws are all written by and for the "haves", not the "have nots"