There is a lot of talk in this forum about Hounslow Council being hand in glove with developers in their desire to exclude local people completely from having a say in the way their area is developed. I've just been looking at the new planning system they have developed in partnership with this site and would say that this isn't the work of an organisation that doesn't have any desire to let residents influence planning matters.
This seems like a really good attempt to tackle a planning system which has become disfunctional when it comes to keeping people informed. This has been exploited in the past by developers to sneak through schemes that would never have got through if the local community had been given due warning. There does seem to be a school of thought that the less the public involved in planning matters the better so it is good to see Hounslow contradicting this by working with ChiswickW4.com. |