Monday 14 February 2011

Planning award for local councils (From Burnham and Highbridge Weekly News)

Planning award for local councils (From Burnham and Highbridge Weekly News)

Really?
How can three councils receive a planning award for an application that has yet to be consented or denied? Surely their work is not done yet?

In terms of my own experience of the planning process for this application it all seems like a bit of a shambles so far, the council gave the appearance of extending their deadline after a large number of complaints from locals about the fact that the application wasn't put on their website for nearly a fortnight after the apllication went in. I was one of those locals I also criticised the council for making the announcement informally via e-mail lists. To date I've received no replies to any of the e-mails that I've sent to W.S.D.C's planning department, although they did go 'formal' following my e-mail making announcements in the local press as I'd suggested. However, as I said above the 'extension' was all a bit of an illusion anyway - Andrew Goodchild had indicated from the outset that they would accept representations until the planning committee met anyway.

All in all the lack of availability of information, bad weather and xmas holidays contributed to a loss of 6 weeks of respondant's time which was why I asked for at least a 6 week extension to any formal deadlines. Just this part of EdFs application amounted to 4 volumes of data. It's quite flabbergasting how a company can generate so much data with so little of it carrying any significant meaning! After trawling through thousands and thousand of pages of it I still found myself complaining about the lack of necessary information with which to assess their application. They had seemingly spent much of their time reproducing word for word cut & paste sections of legislation and planning law, It's a shame they didn't bother to read any of it before inserting any of it into their documents!!!

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