Neighbour has objected to our plans

[Jeremy Harris]

43 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

 

Agreed. I saw this in action locally when following a planning application nearby.

 

The planning office is entitled to ignore the Parish Council but cannot override the opinion of the Ward Councillor. In the situation I followed the full time pros in the planning office wanted to approve. The PC and Ward Councillor objected. It was the opinion of the Ward Councillor that mandated a referral of the application to the planning committee.

 

At the committee hearing the chairman of the committee voiced disapproval directed at the pro planner that such an easy case to approve had been brought to committee. The pro planner responded by saying the planning office wanted to approve without referral but the objection of the Ward Councillor forced the matter to committee.

 

 

The key thing here is that the County, or Unitary Authority, Councillor has no authority, as an individual, over the planning officer, but does have the authority to call in an application, and that call in over rides any other criteria that may normally require an application to be called in to committee.  Around here there is a threshold number of (valid) objections that automatically gets an application called in, even if no one with the authority to do so has actually called it in (I think the threshold is 8 applications, off the top of my head).

 

The bottom line is that if someone wishes objections to an application to have more impact, then they need to ensure they either exceed the threshold for calling in the application, directly influence their local authority councillor and persuade them to call it in, or try to get their PC to get the LA councillor to call it in. 

 

As a PC, we recently took the latter course of action  We had received several objections directly to us (mainly emails and phone calls), plus we reviewed the application in the normal way and had serious reservations about some aspects of it, so we requested that our LA councillor call it in, which she has done.  Our actions had no effect, mind, as highways had already objected and there were more than the threshold number of valid objections anyway, so it would have gone to the planning committee without us doing anything.  Might have been better if we'd assumed that this would happen, TBH, as we're now persona non grata as far as the applicant is concerned...

[Moonshine]

o.k this isn't quite on topic, but interested in knowing, when the consultation goes out, do people tend to make a comment towards the start or the end of the consultation period. Also how hard and fast is the 21 days to comment? do the LPA allow comments after this time?

[Dreadnaught]

53 minutes ago, Moonshine said:

o.k this isn't quite on topic, but interested in knowing, when the consultation goes out, do people tend to make a comment towards the start or the end of the consultation period. Also how hard and fast is the 21 days to comment? do the LPA allow comments after this time?

 

In my current ongoing experience of my planning application, neighbours wait until the end or even beyond the end of the consultation period. And comments received by the LPA after the deadline are still considered in the normal way. Its not a hard cut off.

[Jeremy Harris]

49 minutes ago, Moonshine said:

o.k this isn't quite on topic, but interested in knowing, when the consultation goes out, do people tend to make a comment towards the start or the end of the consultation period. Also how hard and fast is the 21 days to comment? do the LPA allow comments after this time?

 

 

Neighbours tend to complain some time after they've see the notices or get the letters, which can be pretty random.  Other statutory consultees, like the EA, Highways, Fire Officer etc can also be very variable and often seem to reply near the end (I'd guess it depends on workload at the time).   Given that if an application goes to committee some views either supporting or opposing the application won't be heard until each speaker gets their allotted 3 minutes at the committee meeting I'd guess there's no really hard and fast rule.

[Moonshine]

Thanks @Dreadnaught and @JSHarris, i guess it will be a play it by ear approach, though it was my gut feeling that comments would come at the end, hopefully a minimal amount though!

[Robert Clark]

We’ve had 4 neighbours complain 

1 adjacent claiming to be overloaded 

3 others complained that 1 neighbour was overloaded 

Seemed like copy / paste 

[epsilonGreedy]

On 30/09/2019 at 17:20, Robert Clark said:

We’ve had 4 neighbours complain 

1 adjacent claiming to be overloaded 

3 others complained that 1 neighbour was overloaded 

 

 

I experienced this. Villagers complained on my behalf that I would be overlooked as a result of someone else's planning revision. This prompted me to upload a positive planning comment about the application including the observation that the development was 25m away and little different in scale relative to my house compared to the prior and already approved plan.

 

The mistake the Nimby's make is adopting a scatter gun approach. There was one strong point of consideration that might have stopped the pros in the planning office approving the said application but this point was lost because of the breadth of trivia spouted by the Nimbys.

[MDC]

Hi Robert,

 

this is an interesting thread to me, as I am proposing my build down the road from the application as referenced. I had a look at your planning application which looked much more comprehensive than ours will be. I note you withdrew the application and wonder if this was to do with the planning application process? 

 

Also, the Architects you chose were designing to Passivhaus. Do they have local builders they use who know about Passivhaus principles in construction?

 

I hope I'm not being intrusive and trust whatever you did next has proved to be good for you.

 

Mark