Planning part II

Planning passed more flats again in Southampton. We are still not getting family housing brought to the panel just more and more flats. You would have thought that the developers might have picked up the thoughts of the panel and the city. This year over 400 flats and less than 20 houses have now been passed.

We also had a few interesting situations, Tesco putting in retrospective planning permission which is quite common by all accounts around the country.

A 71 bed care home plus day centre with 14 car parking spaces turned down. This shows how the policy that limits car parking spaces can wrong. The number of staff, service vehicles etc not being given adequate parking can have a major impact in the surrounding area, also with a day care centre for elderly people how are they expected to get to the centre, bike??? The care home in my opinion is a great idea and BUPA followed the council guidelines but these are at best woeful. The council should address this problem.

We also had the disgusting sight of council bureaucracy trying to force the panel to act as soulless drones rather than as councillors, resulting in people being disadvantaged. Without a proper explanation of the case in detail, we had to make a decision which would disadvantage a neighbour if we passed it, or disadvantage a person who is disabled if we refused it. Yes we have to make difficult decisions, but what was disgusting in this case was there was a solution which the council had not put forward which could help both people. Thankfully we ignored the council advice and asked for it to be deferred so the parties could work out a solution.