Puzzles me then as to why the initial planning permission is so set against them. If they turn it into something that doesn't work for the area it will fail and be sold on and redeveloped in time anyway, the alternative is years of the hell for locals ou mention just for it to get to that point anyway. Often it seems that locals want a building to be used for something that isn't viable, whilst infrastructure concerns would be justified it's hard to imagine most local opposition being for reasons that are that valid. Seems easier just to ease up the system to focus on key cases and get things moving on all the abandoned properties etc that represent a safety hazard
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The usual reason the initial planning permission fails is because they're wanting to do something that will clearly be detrimental to the surrounding area. It's a long one this, but I think it gives a good overall picture of what happens and why.
Somebody bought a large detached house on the corner of a main road and a side street, the side street being terraced houses. The house wasn't in a bad state, people were living in it not long until it was bought. The new owner wanted permission to knock it down and replace it with late night fast food takeaway. Residents objected and councillors agreed - there were already several takeaways in the surrounding area and with no parking on the main road, it would mean the residents (already struggling with parking issues due to the other takeaways) would now have a place directly across from them with customers/delivery vehicles causing noise and disruption until the early hours. That would be on top of any other issues you get, like noise and smell. They'd already had enough and just wanted the house to be left as a house, it was becoming really unpleasant to live there.
So the owner just sat on it, deliberately leaving it insecure. The garden became full of junk, the windows got smashed, the lead pipe got stripped out. He didn't care, he was only going to demolish it anyway. It got partially burnt out and the council ordered him to secure it and gave him a schedule of works to fit metal screens on the ground floor doors/windows and clear out the garden. He ignored it, so the works were carried out and he was billed (and eventually taken to court because he didn't pay it). This is over the course of a few years, with the residents constantly demanding councillors do something about it, but them not really having the powers to do much other than ask him what he's doing with his property, which he just ignored.
The owner then applied for it to be knocked down, which was granted purely as the residents were fed up of it and the house was just a magnet for local youths and druggies. The site cleared, the owner dumped a shipping container on it and residents woke up one morning to find the owner had turned it into a (very makeshift) hand car wash. Enforcement officers turned up and shut it down within a few days. The owner then requested retrospective planning permission to turn it into a hand car wash, which was denied for various reasons - the main one being that the site was far too small and if there was more than about 3 cars being washed then they would start queuing onto a main arterial road and cause significant traffic disruption. There was also no proper drainage system and residents would have to put up with the sound of pressure washers all day. So he just sat on it again (apart from one time where he temporarily "forgot" and the hand car wash reopened and was shut down again within hours).
A few more years pass and suddenly a different set of containers appear on site, this time to be used as a cafe with a few on-site parking spaces. Astoundingly, the complete chancer of an owner yet again "forgot" that you might need planning permission to do that, but I think this time it was closed before he even got a chance to open it. He then submitted a retrospective planning permission, which was soundly rejected for all the obvious reasons. He then appealed to the Secretary of State who overturned it, albeit with a few conditions regarding opening times and the appearance of it. So after 10 years of hell, it all happened anyway.
Long story short, he got what he wanted in the end and I've no doubt that any money/energy/time spent on it was buried in profit by that point. This is only the tip of the iceberg for the owner, who I am quite happy to say is a complete pox on the area and has a portfolio of similarly awful things and a papertrail of retrospective planning permission behind him, including a knackered hotel that he turned into HMO flats without even telling anyone and plans for more to come. Still, it's nowhere near his very nice and very big house, so it's not like it's his problem.Comment
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Obviously denying the application didn’t work out well. What are you suggesting as a path of action here?
Here in Ireland, we have way too many protected areas and the cost of actually keeping them in original condition is prohibitive. For example, replacing older windows to match other old windows costs a fortune so they just end up not being replaced. And so a lot of areas fall into disrepair. More than that, eventually you find you have a city that evolved in the 1800s that isn’t remotely fit for 2023 life. So personally, aside from maybe one or two ‘museum streets’ and a handful of very significant buildings, my feeling is to tear down and rebuild as often as possible. It’s the only way of keeping an area working for modern life in my view.Comment
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The only thing I can think of is local councils allocated certain areas as residential only, so basically if you buy a property in that grid reference it has to be used purely for residential purposes whether you keep it or knock down and rebuild. There'd still be a thousand issues though.
Not the same thing but the primary school our kids go to has decided that rather than renovate the 130 year old building they have (which has an ajoining 50 year old building with both meeting the capacity needs) they will instead build an entirely new school on a playing field that they own and demolish the existing two buildings. All of this is supposed to be complete within 12 months with not even the first blade of grass having been cut yet. There doesn't appear to be any effort to save the old building and the new one will be sandwiched between three residential streets with no through traffic routes for those doing school runs which will mean basically several hundred people blockading a single densely packed (without a school there already) residential street.
Common sense has been dead in this country for yearsComment
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Moderate Tories say the party risks being seen as the nasty party again.
Risks. We're years past that point now. A showcase how how utterly off the mark and out of touch with reality they areComment
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I think it’s more that the Tories are worried about being seen as the nasty party by those demographics that actually matter to them, as in the ones they basically consider worthy humans. They wouldn’t have become Tories in the first place if they didn’t enjoy sticking the boot in to the powerless and minorities.Comment
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Which makes this even more on cue
The Home Office knew the Bibby Stockholm was a potential legionnaires threat the day they boarded the first refugees onto itbut still waited another four days to actComment
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NHS in England to replace two-week cancer appointment target | Cancer | The Guardian
How do you have shorter Cancer waiting lists? Double the time it takes to be classed as waiting - Another Tory winning ideaComment
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UK inflation falls sharply to 6.8% as cost of living pressures ease | Inflation | The Guardian
Chunky rate drop off because apparently the cost of living crisis is easing
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Trans women banned from world chess events while review takes place | Chess | The Guardian
This just seems stupendously stupid when none of the usual competition concern arguments remotely applyComment
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From what I understand, Chess has two gender divisions - "Open" and "Female". There isn't actually a "Male" division, that's mixed; the "Female" division only exists because, at one point, it was identified there weren't any female players in the top rankings, meaning all the tournaments were male-focused, and of course, there's a reasonable argument that socioeconomic and gender bias in society at large leads to that; not that women are fundamentally predisposed to be worse at Chess.Originally posted by Neon Ignition View Post
I'm not a psychologist or a chess expert, so I don't know why the upper echelons of chess are so male dominated. But I also know that this is somewhat unique, as the women's division purely exists as an exercise in inspiring women to take up chess. Like, that's what it's for. So I can see this discussion getting quite heated.
Now, again, as I've said before, if you ask me how I feel about drawing a pie chart where blue is "recognising how people present their gender as their gender" and red is "fairness in sport", then I'm gonna draw you a blue circle with the tiniest slither of red, if I can even be arsed to add it at all. Because one is a major social issue that affects people's lives, and the other is, well, sport.Comment
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...talking of buses being ****e, daughter is on her way home on the bus as of now and she's sent a picture, someone has shat on the bus - downstairs too.Originally posted by CMcK View Post
Welcome to Manchester!Comment
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Lucy Letby sentenced to whole-life jail term for murdering seven babies | Lucy Letby | The Guardian
Sunak says he won't be able to stop all the small boats by the next general election but there are less coming through
I know why it's working
Call for investigation into Nadine Dorries over failure to quit as MP | Nadine Dorries | The GuardianComment
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More than ever it feels like we don't have a government, its just a bunch of oligarchs at the top all trying to make as much money as they can before being kicked out of office.Comment
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