David Morgan R.I.P.

David Morgan, a senior partner at one of St Albans' prominent Architects' practices, Cannon Morgan Rheinberg, died last night in Lister Hospital.

I first met David as a planning councillor on one of the many occasions when he was trying to get a very well designed scheme approved and running into wildly disproportionate opposition.

I was to come to know David socially and he later became a very good friend, but I had already formed the opinion before we became friends that of all the architects in St Albans who ran into unreasonable political, NIMBY or planning purist opposition to perfectly good planning proposals - and that is a VERY long list - David was one of who faced some of the silliest and most disproportionate opposition. He usually managed to keep his temper and courtesy in dealing with that situation far better than most people would have or did, including some of the others who faced the same sitations

I'd better add that I did not agree with everything David proposed, and before any of the tens of thousands of people who ever objected to a planning application in St Albans while I was a planning councillor there might read this and think I am getting at them, I'd be the first to agree that there were also plenty of the two and a half thousand applications a year which were submitted to that council which richly deserved to run into opposition.

Like myself David Morgan was an old boy of St Albans School - in his case about thirty years before me - and he later designed a number of award winning schemes for the school.

He was a truly nice guy and all his loving family and many friends will miss him.

Rest in Peace.

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