Planning – time for us to have our say

As I said in my last blog, I recently took issue with the planning officer over the lack of consultation on a 15 metre wind turbine which is going up on a ridge 800 metres from the back of our house. He claimed he had consulted various bodies including Westleton Parish Council which had no objections. I pointed out that: it might be in the Westleton area, but it couldn’t be seen from the village; it was much nearer to our village and would dominate the skyline like some monstrous alien. (However, for the time being, until the turbine is attached, it looks more like the Skylon.)

“Why wasn’t our parish consulted?”

“Perhaps they should have been, but we did consult English Nature.”

But the turbine is on farmland way outside the AONB.”

“Well, a notice was put up on the highway.”

“Have you ever been along Fen Street – it’s a mile long single-track lane leading from nowhere to nowhere. The only people who ever go along it are those visiting one of the five houses there – and they probably drive. They’re not going to see a tiny notice on a post set back from the road.”

The conversation reminded me forcibly of the wonderful passage in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when the planning officer is arguing with Arthur Dent, who is lying in front of a bulldozer trying to prevent his home being flattened.

"But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."

"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."

"But the plans were on display...."

"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."

"That's the display department."

"With a flashlight."

"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."

"So had the stairs."

"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"

"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'…… Ever thought of going into advertising?”

Planning has become more and more process driven. Provided you can tick all the boxes – fine. It matters not what the outcome is or if the decision defies common sense. Provided you follow the right process, that’s all right.

Given the part that consultation should play in planning, it is surprising how little effort some authorities make to engage the community when development proposals emerge.

Whilst the best write to everyone affected, the worst do virtually nothing. Some seem to be keen almost to conceal controversial proposals – all they want is a quiet life. The last thing they need is some meddlesome resident getting hot under the collar about some scheme they could otherwise deal with the minimum of fuss under delegated powers. They don’t need the involvement of an enraged busybody threatening their average decision times.

So what do they do? Put an advert in the paper or put up a notice. An advert in the paper might be all right if it were a real advert rather than a public notice. What kind of sad person reads the public notices? They may fulfil a statutory requirement, but they are hardly in the spirit of the legislation.

Whilst a prominent poster can attract attention, the sort of thing we see is a bland A4 note that usually gives little information about the project but says that the plan can be inspected at some inconvenient time in some inconvenient place.

I cannot help thinking that planning should be more inclusive. I have long advocated that planners should do more to sample opinion in the plan-making consultation. They should also do more when they receive potentially controversial applications – and actively seek the views of those affected, even if it means knocking on doors or sending letters with annotated plans which describe the proposal in some detail.

Green energy – anything goes

I recently phoned up our local planning officer to take issue with the lack of consultation on a 15 metre wind turbine which is going up in a prominent position 800 metres from the back of our house. He admitted that perhaps he ought to have consulted our village as the only settlement affected by the structure. But he added that, even if he had refused consent, the applicant would have probably won on appeal. He was still feeling sore about an appeal he had lost down the road. “When it comes to green energy, all normal planning policies go out the window.”

This started me thinking. He’s right. Take a look at the house in middle of the photo. I used to live there. It was erected about 10 years ago. It is opposite a beautiful church slap bang in the middle of a conservation area. The conservation status was deemed so important that, at considerable expense, the local authority match-funded European money to put the overhead electricity and telephone cables underground.

So when the developers applied for consent to put up the house, the planners were, quite rightly, very fussy. The building is finished in traditional local bricks laid to mimic Flemish Bond (long one, short one, long one – for those of you who aren’t familiar with the technical terms). The roof has a traditional Suffolk asymmetric pitch and is clad in local black pantiles.

After all this effort to get something that fits in, along comes a new owner who takes a shine to new solar panels. Perhaps he’s a committed environmentalist? Perhaps he works for Everest? Perhaps he thinks that, like Stonecrete, they will increase the value of his house? Perhaps he is gullible and fell for the salesman’s hard sell “Half price for demonstration projects in your area Sir?” Who knows? Come what may, I wouldn’t mind so much if this chap and others like him were going to save the planet. But they are not. The science is unproven. The embedded carbon used to make the photovoltaics may well be greater than the carbon saved over the lifetime of the installation.

Just look at the panels. They might be at home on a Mir Space Station or on the set of Startrek, but they look totally out of place in an old Suffolk village. Would they have been allowed if they were necessary for say television reception or receiving broadband? Of course not. Would any old plastic framed thermally efficient replacement windows been accepted? No, the planners would have insisted on something in keeping with the building. Can the planners do anything about these monstrous solar panels? No. About 18 months ago, government changed the rules. You can almost now put up what you like on a roof (as opposed to a wall) in a conservation area. (Who puts up such panels on walls?)

When it comes to green energy generation anything goes.

Changing Banks

2010 was a year of change for us. We moved full time to Suffolk, changed power company, changed IT provider, changed car and changed bank.

Banks admit that customers rarely change banks. Many, if not most people, are dissatisfied with the service they get, but are reluctant to change – which is one of the reasons why banks are so complacent and their service so lousy. We have not been at all happy with the awful performance of NatWest for years, but like others have stuck with them, because the competition is little, if any better and because of the hassle any such change would involve. What finally pressed us into a move was the location of our nearest branches – half an hour away at either Woodbridge or Beccles.

For most things, branch location is not a worry at all. Most transactions can be effected over the phone or Internet. The problem comes with cheques, like my £6-50p dividend from dear old Adnams. It would cost considerably more in fuel alone to drive to Woodbridge and back than the value of the cheque.

The decision to change was not taken lightly – I had been with NatWest (and the Westminster before it) for 45 years.

We decided against First Direct (you can pay in cheques at HSBC) notwithstanding the online plaudits, because we wanted a person we could talk to face-to-face – an old-fashioned bank manager.

We settled on Barclays, which has branches at Leiston and Saxmundham (as well as Southwold, Aldeburgh and Halesworth).

Banks tell us that it is easy to change; just give them your account details and, no worries, they’ll do the rest. We stressed how important it was to transfer the standing orders from our sole accounts to our joint account otherwise we would quickly clock up a large overdraft. We got lists of direct debits and standing orders to check, ticked them off, sat back and forgot about it, until two days ago. We tried to pay our horrendous domestic fuel oil bill by our Barclays joint debit card. (Never ever moan to us about the price of gas or electricity – the domestic fuel oil racket will be the subject of another blog.) The payment was rejected, so we paid by another card.

Puzzled as to why the card had been rejected we went to our accounts on line and saw that Barclays had taken money out of our sole accounts, but paid it in to our old NatWest joint account, leaving us embarrassingly overdrawn at Barclays. So we phoned our old-fashioned bank manager who was very apologetic and told us she would fix it, but for this month we had to pay a cheque from our NatWest account to transfer the money back into our Barclays account. If you are not confused by now I’d be surprised.

It took an hour and a half to check our accounts on line. We had a raft of other more minor problems, which I’m sure will be fixed in time. However for some reason, our mobile phone payment to Vodafone fell down a hole between the two banks. Soon after discovering the problem, we received a stroppy text message from the company threatening to cut us off. After two or three calls to Latvian ladies, “Why can’t you take it out of the new account – the direct debit is in place?”

“Can you pay by some other means?”

“Yes but please answer my question.”

“You’ll have to fill in a new direct debit form.”

“No I won’t.”

“Yes you will…..”

And so it went on, with Vodafone eventually acknowledging our direct debit, but insisting we paid our last bill by card.

So what have we learned from all of this. First, I remain convinced that banks would offer a better service if more customers voted with their feet. But secondly, if you do change banks, what can go wrong will go wrong … and make sure you have a friendly face that can put things right.