Unforseen Consequences

The door to our small High Street supermarket is set back from the pavement within a lobby, which also accommodates a stack of baskets and a rack of free newspapers and magazines.
Last week I saw a Council planning notice stuck to the recessed door. Fearing that the supermarket was to become the eighth hairdresser or fifth takeaway in town, I stopped to read the notice. Phew! The supermarket seemed to be staying and was asking for permission to replace the old swing door with an automatic sliding version.
Now, with no offence intended, the supermarket is no architectural gem. Unless you are standing bang outside, the recessed door is not visible so why is planning permission needed? Why can’t the supermarket just get on with it – after all an automatic sliding door will be a lot safer than the existing swing door and much easier for the elderly and disabled? A cynic might point out that the Council gets a fee for every planning application. If this is the reason, it is a bad reason, because it is an unproductive cost which the supermarket has to eventually recover from its customers.
My example is by no means unique. If you read the official Council lists of planning applications, more than half usually relate to trivial matters such as rebuilding a garden wall, or putting up a garden shed. Right from the start in 1947, planning law recognised that it could not and should not control everything. To do so would have paralysed it in trivia. To avoid this, certain general exceptions were built in. These were called “permitted development”. Their nature has been varied over the years to reflect changes in public attitude and Local Councils have been left with discretion as to precise interpretation. However, planning departments are not immune from ‘empire building’ and the application of these exceptions is yet another postcode lottery.
The Government has recently made several changes to planning law. At one end of the spectrum, they have taken away Local Councils’ decision making powers over major projects (eg: power stations, airports, major roads etc.), in order to cut out delays to what are regarded as ‘national’ projects. At the same time, they have reviewed and broadened the scope of ‘permitted development’, so that owners and occupiers can do more without the need for planning permission.
Anyone considering an extension or other addition should read the new planning guides, which can be downloaded from the Government’s Planning Portal site or available as booklets from Local Councils.
Any relaxation in bureaucracy is welcome. In theory, planning should always be ‘control with a light touch’, but in practice it is often impossible to foresee the interaction between planning and other legislation. A reader recently wrote to me of just such an example. A small rundown garden centre was bought, and amongst a series of planning permissions, which the new owner obtained for improvement, one was for a coffee shop, which duly opened. A year later, an application for the grant of a full liquor licence for the coffee shop was obtained, followed by a successful request for the garden centre to have an entertainment licence. Neither of the licences were acted upon, but a year later a planning application was submitted for a change of use so that “weddings, wedding receptions and other events” could be held at the garden centre. How nice, everyone thought, with no anticipation that the cumulative effect of these individually innocuous permissions, was the ability to host Music Festivals attended by large booze fuelled audiences. It was discovered, too late, that the buyer of the rundown garden centre was the owner of a recording studio and a Rock Band, and didn’t have the slightest interest in plants or holding weddings.
©February 2010

NOTE:
The writer is an independent chartered surveyor and has no connection with any firm of estate agents or surveyors. For reasons of client confidentiality he writes under a pseudonym. Comments and enquiries are welcome and may be sent c/o Wealden Advertiser Property, Gardens & Interiors.

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