When a planning application goes nuclear… almost literally!
We live in precarious times and there is always a nut-job running a nuclear power somewhere who is threatening to blow us all up… Kim Jong Un, Putin, Iran… and of course, one can imagine Trump putting his MacDonalds milkshake down on the red button.
But in all seriousness, here in the UK we do have a Detailed Emergency Planning Zone (DEPZ) in the proximity of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Burghfield in Berkshire (near Reading in Wokingham Borough Council). The DEPZ requires the AWE, the Council and other responsible authorities to plan for a nuclear disaster or attack, which involves telling residents to shelter inside for their safety, and other protective measures like evacuation or distribution of tablets to deal with radiation poisoning.
The DEPZ and housing delivery has come head-to-head recently with a planning application for 148 homes being refused by Wokingham, the decision upheld and then confirmed by Housing Minister, Matthew Pennycook.
The DEPZ also doomed the Grazeley ‘garden town’ project, which would have added 15,000 homes to the nearby village.
During the appeal for the 148 houses, the applicant said that: “The effects of the housing crisis are manifesting themselves now….They are not dependent on a one-in-two-million-year nuclear accident… The council’s shelter period, in circumstances where the worst-case consequences of the explosion in F21 weather conditions contaminate only 1% of the DEPZ, is of an unreasonable length… a sheltering period of 48 hours would be too long, and instead suggested that people would have to shelter between two to six hours instead.”
However, the planning inspector, stated: “I take the evidence of the people who would actually be involved in the emergency response very seriously and they think it would take much longer than two to six hours.”
Fair enough, I think if and organisation like DEPZ is objecting and those in power says that you can’t build homes then you probably can’t. This is quite serious stuff. But, it does raise the question about other organisations that have the power to influence the planning system to the same scale… The NIMBY ones who use their powers on fairly flimsy grounds to stop development. The Government promised to scrap their powers in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill (still eagerly awaited… come on Steve Reed, sharpen your quill and sign it off!).
It also beggars the questions, all these NIMBY communities who “go nuclear” over much needed homes in some fields that make no contribution to national safety or in fact very much at all to biodiversity or food production etc.
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if people could get a bit of perspective on planning matters and realise that homes are needed and it really should only be objected to if there is a very, very good nationally important reason and not just their house prices and fields where they walk the dog.
Until next week,
Henry