Most of the noise about the Localism Bill has been generated over changes to the planning regime to enable development to occur quicker and more responsively to local housing and development needs and opportunities. It’s very hard to tell what the outcome will be…we certainly need more home building and local business development and I am sure it is possible without ruining the rural landscape. As a rural dweller myself I have seen the benefit to our local south Norfolk community of properly zoned housing and business development of a sensitive kind. It keeps young people in the area, improves the local shopping through increased customers, promotes a mixed community of age and class that sustains a varied mix of employment and leisure activities. It isn’t the Norfolk I came to live in 35 years ago but it shouldn’t be. It’s still one of the best places to live (look at our life expectancy here!) so I am largely sympathetic to the Government’s intentions if rather concerned about the new central powers of the Secretary of State.
I am more concerned about the changes proposed to the penalties for abuse of local government power. Over the summer I watched on DVD the old 1996 TV series “Our Friends in the North”, which documented in drama the corruption of Newcastle City Council in the 1960s and early 70s. It reminded me of how easy corruption and abuse of power can happen in poorly governed councils. I saw the catastrophic effects of poor local government governance in Hackney and Lambeth at first hand in the 1980’s. Standards in public life need continuous polishing to keep them gleaming honestly and I do not therefore understand why the Government is planning to abolish various safeguards.
Lord Bichard
Lords Bichard, Filkin, Newton of Braintree and Tope (a glorious cross party grouping) have tabled amendments to address the serious deficiencies in the new standards system proposed in the Bill and these will be discussed next week. They accept the abolition of the Standards Board for England but make it obligatory for all local authorities to adopt a code of conduct for members and include the requirement to register and declare interests, as now.
The amendments remove the new criminal offence in the Bill and restore the power for local authorities themselves to suspend members who are found guilty of serious misconduct. They make it obligatory for each council to have a Standards Committee with independent members, as now, and for an appeals mechanism drawn from local government. I shall support them.
From “make it obligatory for all members to register and declare interests, “as now” (i.e. already should be happening ?)”
I just visted my Local Council’s website but could not find any such register nor declarations of their respective interests.
(So I have emailed them, Plymouth City Council, “why and where”);
and I believe I have done the right things here so far;
but like so many British democratic matters, duties, and participativities, one can not be at all sure nor feel ‘safe’.
1700PM.Sunday04September2011.JSDM.
“It’s still one of the best places to live…”
Sure is.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cameron_self/5287627589/in/set-72157607692389775
(from Normal for Norfolk set)
The baroness is referring to T Dan smith and his ilk no doubt, who may have committed flagrant breaches of regulations, and made big backhanders to get his way.
There seem to be two issues on the air here, one of further incursions in to the Green belts wherever they may be, and the other purely and simply of updating planning law in keeping with more recent established conventions.
I should like to refer the baroness to the practice of putting in planning applications so carefully and so sequentially that the planning officer ends up having to admit that, if he does not approve a certain plan, he will end up contradicting a decision made earlier for the same buildings or properties.
It is such a basic skill that every Tom, Dick and Garry on his street corner, is capable of
“tricking” the officer in this way, and there is sweet nothing he can do to prevent it.
I call it submitting apparently innocuous “contradictory planning applications” to achieve a desired result, which the officer would not otherwise have agreed to.
When there are so many clever clogs about sufficiently schooled to submit the forms correctly, it is difficult to know how to combat corruption, promoted by the applicant himself, a cynical misuse of planning forms!
To make a proviso that
” if the sequential planning applications ARE contradictory, then the approved application may be rescinded,” would be effective, but possibly unworkable.
I would say that the more recent planning development “Secret Pre-planning application
enquiry” has been a very useful development of recent years. As far as I know it did not exist formally in the 50s and 60s, but it does today. You may enquire as to the likelihood of a planning application being approved, in the event of its being submitted.
That can save a lot of time and money, for everyone.
I am very much against the practice of second home ownership, and if only a way could be found to penalize such people I would be delighted. rural house prices are totally false, based on ridiculous ideas of rural demography.
To approve a planning application for a village residence in the same way as “Agricultural conditions” are applied, but for the use of homes to be restricted for “FIRST HOME use ONLY”, would be a miracle to behold, and reduce the value of rural property, to a sensible level, and make more available for people dedicated to rural life.
As holiday let – both construction and change of use – applications constitute much of the planning activity in many pleasant rural areas I think your ‘main home’ plan wouldn’t please anyone including the locals who depend on tourist activity.
Croft, some time ago we had a chat about what ‘rural’ means today. I hadn’t realised that attempts to define where a person lives has itself turned into a cottage industry.
Below is a set from the ‘helpful’ http://www.defra.gov.uk/statistics/files/rural-urban-guidance-notes.pdf
Major Urban
Large Urban
Other Urban
Town and Fringe
Village
Hamlet and Dispersed
Rural-50
Rural-80
Significant Rural
As a guide it sucks since the first report following on uses the following:
Less Sparse Urban
Sparse Urban
Less Sparse Rural Town and Fringe
Sparse Rural Town and Fringe
Less Sparse Village and Dispersed
Sparse Village and Dispersed
http://www.defra.gov.uk/statistics/files/Population-and-migration.pdf
The series of pdf files continue to mash up definitions and occasionally throw in a new one such as
Less Sparse Hamlet and Isolated Dwelling
There’s no hope, is there?
PS Welcome back!
the problem with rescinding previous approvals
forming part of a contradictory sequence of applications is that the applicants are careful
to DO the development approved before making the next application, so rescinding would entail demolishing what the planning officer had previously said he approved of.
Many planning applications are done on this basis. I know of one small old garage development Architect who has spent his whole life waiting for the planning officer to realize that he has contradicted his previous plans.
Sometimes it can take years for him to realize, but the wait may be rewarded handsomely in development gains.
Being a planning officer is not an easy task but the architect’s dept is a powerful one, in masonic terms as well, the Grand architect in the sky!
Development has been used as a pay off to friends and allies in politics for a very long time. It is a means of giving a pay back for their loyalty and is a big money earner for those they wish to bring in.
The problem lies in the way the deal is struck. Devastation of the rural countryside to build cheap and grossly ugly, tiny boxes for the less than rich is a low policy. People who live locally fear it greatly, and so they should. In keeping with their heritage is the only way to go.
Another area that politicians always miss is, those who want social and low cost housing, are not interested in rural areas. No jobs, the cost to commute outrageous for the average family and no desire to be in a neighborhood they have nothing in common with.
The main group on lists for social housing are those who find themselves homeless or in inadequate accommodation. And that takes immigrants to the top of that list. And immigrants are not happy with being placed in areas where their own cultural activities do not exist. Take the family housed in splendour in Coventry who managed to get rehoused in London’s Hampstead in order to be close to family and friends. This then must be considered a basic human right. No matter the indigenous British may feel the same way, they, in general, are disregarded.
This moves us on to how hard will it be to get these units rented or sold? Will there be, once again, unletable and unsellable blocks of concrete standing until they rot? Another throwback to an era of incompetence?
Why is it governments continue to lurch from one bad housing policy to another? They never ever learn from the past. Now why is that?
Time for a radical rethink here?
“Standards in public life need continuous polishing to keep them gleaming honestly and I do not therefore understand why the Government is planning to abolish various safeguards.”
Or put another way – unelected officials making arbitrary judgements and acting as a judge and jury with powers to suspend people for actions that didn’t break any law.
This morning I listened to the BBC Today show and heard the clown Duncan Smith on the matter of how people in society, who receive state benefit must be prepared to lose their home, or, the pittance they receive, if found indulging in criminality. What a laugh that is.
Now why is it this sophisticated man cannot apply that to his peers of rich men and their criminality?
People on the bottom of the rung are in a position of dire poverty as a result of the collusion between rich government officials and pig like bankers who gambled the social fund away because of their offensive and ‘criminal’ greed.
How many of these people, who colluded in the robbery of our collective fund, are facing criminal charges? How many are suffering loss of their homes via the state requirement that they should? How many of them are facing any kind of retribution for their total lack of responsibility and illegality? Can you answer that? Then tell me why not?
Take it closer to home, how many MP’s and members of the Lords are facing homelessness as a result of the expenses fiddles they were involved in and for the criminality of that action? How many are facing financial ruin as well? And if they are not being charged with their crime, why is Duncan Smith not calling for them to suffer equally to those who pinched a pair of sneakers or walked off with a TV set?
He is so out of touch with the life of those suffering from starvation that, that, it in itself, is obscene. Where is this guy living? People of his ilk have no right to be in government at all, as they are not equipped to make coherent judgment on lives they have no connection to or knowledge of.
If the Conservatives want to be the rulers of this state, they must be ready to educate themselves on the lives of the ‘many’ rather than sucking up to the rumps of the few they holiday with. That life is the life of fantasy to the majority, unknown to the people they wish to rule.
Lots of interesting points there, but I must take issue with Gareth Howell on second homes. Of course I’ve got one..I don’t want to live in a hotel or club when I’m in London to work. It’s also true that second homes often become first homes in retirement. People want to live in rural areas because it’s a pleasant environment and not all rural areas are expensive compared with towns. Second home owners do not deprive local people of homes. They bring employment, shopping and thriving local pubs and restaurants. As long as the supply of housing remains short then of course prices will stay high. Maude Elwes, there are many young people in rural areas who are neither migrant nor unemployed who would benefit from a mixed affordable housing development in a rural area whose work in the community is pretty valuable. Don’t knock it. I do have some sympathy with your earlier comment about the poor quality of some developments; good design doesn’t have to be expensive nor necessarily intrude on good countryside. Some of our London greenbelt is an eyesore that good housing would improve. .
What happens round here with contract farm workers for example is that they live in the nearest town on the bottom of the property ladder, so I can see why the noble Baroness takes issue, and anyone involved in rural industry may do the same.
However what it does totally prevent is the use of rural property for any form of self sufficiency, which the dedicated anti-consumerist would enthuse and rave about.
It does deprive rural workers of rural properties, and it does also deprive potential single home homestead/horticulture owners, of any stake in the soil whatsoever.
I know a good many who have migrated to Spain and Portugal on account of it. I would be reluctant to recommend the Balkans to anybody in spite of 40 acres and six bedroomed house for £10,000 in Bulgaria, being a bargain at the price, and in a potential war zone, sooner rather than later! Still, A Bulgarian spouse might be persuasive!
The price of rural property in the WHOLE of the UK excludes all people earning less than
£30,000/yr and they are precisely the ones who need the acreage for horticulture/home growing.
The whole system is based on imperialist division of land dating back to the 18thC and the plantations. William Penn!
The noble baroness, with respect, contributes fulsomely to it, with her insistence on it not being exclusive, but then imperialism may still be popular…. in Italy? I am not merely anti-imperialist, but anti-globalist too, which seems to be the only successor to Marxism avalaible in the shops today.
Having to migrate to far flung parts of the world to dig a plot for self sustenance is surely to have Globalism forced upon one, and
forced out of these tiny islands in such a way that there are vast sink wells of crime of disavowed people in the cities of UK who can never avail themselves of the most basic
skills of all, digging the soil and making something of it, self reliant and for themselves!
Rant over.
Lady tizzy mentions the demography scales, of which I was unaware. They are most certainly complete fantasy. this village is claimed to have 250! There may be 70 in august, and about 30 in January.
I have done similar headcounts in other local villages with the same results. If you include second home owners, it would be double those figures but still nowhere near
those claimed.
@BaronessMurphy:
It has been some considerable time since social housing was offered to locals. In fact many Councils no longer accept locals onto the general housing register as they tell those who apply they have no opportunity whatsoever of being housed because their duty to those entering the country take priority.
Perhaps this link will give you more insight into the reality of ‘locals’ needing a home. It is non existent in most places. And so the people remain homeless in perpetuity.
http://england.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/finding_a_place_to_live/council_waiting_lists
As a little reminder to those who believe the ‘locals’ get housed this Panorama inquiry may nudge your memory.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0110b4f
Americans know how to design low cost but livable flats and houses. The British developers would do themselves, and those who have to live in their buildings, a great service if they followed their interior planning suggestions.
http://southerndesigner.com/showplan.php?plan=8148&sessid=
http://www.drummondhouseplans.com/house-plan-detail/info/1002820.html