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.

Further delay in a housing policy for Southampton

A policy for Southampton on family housing has been further delayed. The shambles that is in place continues. As I have posted in the past, at full council in January the Conservatives asked for a policy to be put in place with immediate effect, to protect family housing in the city. The Labour and Liberal parties rejected this and asked for a debate.

This was to have started today, a month and a half since the meeting. You can not accuse them of being slow! This has now been delayed. Thus family housing is still under threat. Yesterday in planning, 28 more flats were passed to be built in the city and no houses. This follows the 251 flats and 16 houses passed at the end of January.

The need to have a policy for the city which provides for family housing of all types at the same time offering a mix of developments so people have a choice is imperative to the city.

The need to address the parking question is also imperative. The council has an inflexible policy on how many spaces can be provided per development. Officers have failed to acknowledge new government guidelines which allow flexibility in relation to the number of spaces that are provided. This should be applied with immediate affect so developers can put in more spaces. Developers often say that they wish to put more spaces in but are told by officers that it will be turned down.