| Topic: | Re:Adam Beamish and the planning process | |
| Posted by: | Paul Corcoran | |
| Date/Time: | 24/11/14 10:02:00 |
| Nearly everything I know about the planning process has been learnt from posts made by Adam Beamish on this forum. I have the upmost respect for his knowledge of the subject and it is asinine to suggest I would write anything spiteful about him. His views on how the process should operate have been stated on this forum many times and I am disappointed to see his childish reaction to them being raised. Any individual or local group who is against a planning application will be indifferent to whether or not a developer or a Council has failed to fulfil its statutory obligations. All that they will be interested in is a legal means to thwart or delay a building that they don't see as appropriate for their area. I'm sure many Councillors or former Councillors like John Connolly would like to see public opinion (or NIMBYism as they would categorise it) excluded from consideration in every planning application as it gets in the way of what they want to do. The main achievement of John Connolly's mercifully brief reign as leader of Hounslow Council would have been the closure of Chiswick New Pool if he had had his way. At that point Labour held some council seats in Chiswick so there was a political cost to doing something unpopular. Nowadays, there are no seats held by Labour in the area so they can proceed with policies that are extremely unpopular. With no rein on executive power provided by potentially negative consequences at the ballot box there seems to me little choice for residents to look at the detailed legal position to see if that provides them any opportunity to influence matters in the same way that his approach has proven so useful when it comes to parking issues. There should be no confidence that the Council would be capable of protecting the best interests of the community in the next decade which is likely to see an unprecedented amount of building in the area. The developers ran rings round the Council over the Brentford Stadium enabling scheme which resulted in a terrible deal in terms of s106 and affordable housing component. With even more massive schemes with Arab oil-money backing figuratively on the horizon (but hopefully never literally) there is every reason to fear that the interests of residents will be a low priority. |