The Cumbria Chronic on why Rome wasn't built in a day and other planning news

I remember from my time on various planning committees (unforgettable from the number of scars it left on my back - it is absolutely impossible to serve on a planning committee, no matter what decisions you take, without making lots of enemies) that many planning applications can be extremely important to the people directly affected by them, or who think they are, and can be highly controversial.

If you vote to grant planning permission for a contentious application, you annoy the people who objected. If you vote to refuse, you'll annoy the applicant and anyone who wanted to live in, work or use whatever they wanted to build or provide.

If you abstain, without some good reason such as having declared an interest because you are connected to the applicant or a prominent objector, both the supporters and opponents of the application will be cross with you and rightly so. 

Whatever system of determining planning applications a country uses. lots of people will be very unhappy with it for similar reasons and usually a mix of good and bad ones. Sometimes they propose sensible ideas for reform. Sometimes they propose alternatives which would be even worse.

The planning system is often blamed, in my opinion not entirely fairly, for the fact that Britain is not building enough housing. The reason I disagree is that councils refusing planning permission is not the main constraint holding back housebuilding. It can be a significant factor, but it's not the main problem.

The two main constraints on how many homes are being built are

  1. Physical and economic limits on how many houses the UK construction industry actually has the capacity to build and
  2. The fact, partly a consequence of the above, that there are vast numbers of unbuilt potential homes which councils HAVE given planning permission for but which developers have not been able to build yet, or have or chosen not to build and have put into their land-bank instead. 

If you really want to "Build Baby Build" as the PM suggests, tackling these problems would be far more effective than trying to bully councils into giving planning permission for even more homes which won't get built.

The most stupid idea I have read this year was to ban elected representatives from having any part in discussions on planning decisions.

Now I won't pretend that planning councillors and ministers don't make mistakes. But if there is one thing you can guarantee would be even worse than planning mistakes made by councillors or ministers who were elected by and can be removed by the voters, it would be having those decisions made by unelected officials who are not accountable to the people in any effective way.

Having said my piece about planning in general, there is an amusing article on the Cumbria Chronic site today about the way Cumbria's newspapers have been reporting on planning decisions. Now, personally I think the local newspapers actually SHOULD report on planning - but as part of proper journalism, not as a substitute for it.

Originally I posted a link to the Cumbria Chronic page here which showed a mock headline along the lines of:

"Rome refused permission for 24 hours building project!" 

Hence the explanation of why Rome wasn't build in a day.

At the moment the Cumbria Chronic has become a private site so not everyone can view it.

For anyone reading this who still can, here is the link to the Cumbria Chronic piece.

PAPER’S WEIRD PLANNING NEWS – The Cumbria Chronic

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