How Councils Work Pt 94 etc

The minutes of the last Development Control Committee meeting are out!

This fascinating document details all the latest planning and enforcement decisions the council makes, apart from the boring routine ones of course.

What's interesting in this one is the declarations of interest* at the start. Cllrs Clark (who is also the portfolio holder for neighbourhood regeneration), Gibson, James, Munir and Wood, five of the eleven councillors present at the meeting, all declared the following interest -

"...a personal interest in agenda item 4(c), 15-16 Long Row, (minute 84), as James Mellors of the applicant company was personally known to him and he had accepted hospitality from the applicant in the past..."

and yet this didn't preclude them from speaking or voting because, under the code of conduct, it's not counted as prejudicial.

Mellors has applied to turn the old Midland Bank on Long Row into a Bingo Hall. It's not without objections, mainly based on it being a 'primary shopping frontage' and a suspicion that the bingo will be ancillary to it's intended main moneyspinner, fruit machines. I have absolutely no idea of the merits of these objections but I mention them to show the application wasn't without controversy and yet the committee meeting is packed with the applicant's mates. Four councillors didn't attend, I'm not sure whether that indicates a normal attendance rate.

It probably won't surprise you that the application was approved then. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that.

Ok, so there's nothing unconstitutional about this but does anybody think it's a coincidence that five ruling party members of the planning committee, including an executive member, have been targeted by a large local business for a bit of the old winin' 'n' dinin'? Do these councillors stop and think that it might look a bit dodgy to accept these invitations? You know, for the look of the thing at least?

*Mind you, at least they declared the interests, unlike some *cough* Hassan Ahmed *cough* I could mention, small mercies at least.

Planning LOLs

This is nice, a story with a happy ending for a change.

Last week, I was intermittently staring into space and following Twitter (an activity that unfortunately seems to make up about 80% of my waking hours) and saw that one of my Twitter contacts (called Tom) seemed to be having a bit of a giggle with the planning department at NCC.

Tom and his missus had decided to do the decent thing and get themselves a solar water heating system fitted to their house, which is an excellent thing to do and something that you'd think that NCC would fall over themselves to encourage. Normally you don't need planning permission for these things but Tom lives in a conservation area so it seems he was advised that he did have to. All went well and permission was granted last year.

However just recently he decided to use a different design of system, replacing two of these -

with just one of these -

Now you'd think that would be an improvement. Only one panel instead of two? Apparently not. Here's the first of Tom's several tweets on the decision he initially received -

Yes that's right. Planners at NCC were making a distinction between solar panels that were in character in a conservation area and solar panels that weren't. That's solar panels they're talking about (I think the area concerned is late Victorian/Edwardian but I'm not sure). Perhaps you're supposed to have that lead diamond pattern stuck on to make them look olde worlde.

This from a council that had just loudly trumpeted its new 'low carbon' waste strategy and which is quite happy to bulldoze the Victoria Leisure Centre, which is also in a conservation area by the way. Consistent much?

Here's a later tweet by Tom. I include it because it's such a perfect summing up of the issue at hand -

But, as I said, this story does have a happy ending and NCC does in fact redeem itself. On Saturday, Tom tweeted this -

I actually doubt that fear of NCCLols played any significant part but yes, the planners have backed down. The decision even says that his solar panel counts as 'permitted development' so doesn't even need planning permission after all. That's some climbdown.

Tom says he only mentioned it out loud on Twitter. While I don't think I quite wield the power to strike fear in the hearts of the men and womenfolk of NCC's planning department I do have a few NCC peeps following me. I did retweet a couple of Tom's posts and maybe someone from NCC saw them or Tom's originals and had a quiet word.

So who knows, maybe I did help but I'm more inclined to simply chalk it up to the power of Twitter this time. The main thing is that Tom and his family can get on with saving a bit of fossil fuel which we all benefit from. And perhaps others nearby who want to carry out similar works will have an easier time of it. I just hope he didn't have to spend too much on preparing what appear to have been unnecessary planning applications.