Planning Blues
It is officially the most depressing week of the year. Monday was “blue Monday” and it is the most depressing week of the year generally… it’s the 47th week of January and your last pay day was literally last year (and boy can you feel it… washing your hair with sunlight liquid is not fun). The weather is particularly $%!* and it is dark when you get up and it is dark when you get home.
I don’t even want to talk about all the stupid decisions going on in planning… Another week passed without us knowing anything more about how the schemes of delegation will work or how Planning Committees will be reformed and trained… despite the Planning and Infrastructure Act saying it will (and have done for over a month now).
So, I thought I would help you turn that frown up-side-down with amusing tales from the world of Planning!
Transport survey and the large SUE
Highways engineers carried out a 12-month survey and used extensive modelling to formulate predicted traffic increases and mitigation/highways improvements etc. A member of the Planning Committee got up at the meeting and said that the previous Sunday he has stood at a key roundabout and counted the card. He then calculated that the professionals and their 12-month survey was out by 47milllion journeys… and all 15 members of the planning committee agreed with him!
The planted Roman pottery and slow worms
Objectors highjacked a site visit by the Planning Committee (the Ward Councillor leaked it) and they showed the members of the Planning Committee the Roman pottery they found on site… still with the auction house ID numbers on it. The Committee agreed and demanded further archaeology!
Did you know that the notoriously shy slow worms (reptiles that hibernate in winter) bask out in the open on tree stumps in December in Birmingham? No really, all they needed was little sunglasses, hats and pina coladas and it could have been Ibiza. The RSPCA disagreed and arrested two people for animal cruelty.
The busiest roundabout in Europe…
Is located in Ripon in North Yorkshire. It was also the most polluted and most dangerous and only in India you could find more dangerous roundabouts. No really, it must be so… a former Deputy Leader of the Council said so at a Planning Committee and they all wholeheartedly agreed with him.
Fences definitely don’t make for good neighbours
A neighbour of the site was very upset about the prospect of “perverts looking into her back garden from the new houses”, so she decided to erect an illegal fence grabbing another two meters of land… unfortunately her dodgy builder dug through an 11k volt power cable and left half a town without electricity. Difficult criminal damage one to explain to the Magistrates.
Don't worry, next Thursday is one day before pay day and the days are getting longer and our clients are getting planning consents left-right-and-centre!
Henry
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