Category Archives: Government

David Cameron advises us to use local policies to fill NPPF gaps

Posted on by • Posted in District council stuff, Government • Tagged , , , , , , • Leave a comment

David Cameron so obviously doesn’t understand the way the planning system works and has not read the NPPF. He appears on the Andrew Marr show this morning, trotting out the propaganda fed to him by those who have been promoting wholesale changes to the planning system.

More interestingly, he suggested that, just because something isn’t ‘specified’ at the national level, such as the control of roadside advertising hoardings, this doesn’t mean it can’t done at the local level. Taken to it’s logical conclusion, this could see the thousands of pages that will been thrown on the bonfire, by the introduction of the 50 odd pages of the NPPF at the national level, replaced by thousands of pages of planning legislation being created at the local level – some improvement to an over complex system that will be!

I hope all of those involved in the producing planning policies at the local level take note of this steer from the Prime Minister. I read this as: Where the National Planning Policy Framework is, out of date, indeterminate or silent on a subject, a local policy is to be used to fill the gap.

Cameron disappoints on the EU relationship

Posted on by • Posted in Government • Tagged , , , , • Leave a comment

David Cameron happy to stay in Europe – that’s disappointing and immediately puts this country on the back foot when trying to tell the EU it’s got it wrong!

Continuing to tell us that it’s all about getting the relationship with right, totally ignores the fact that the whole EU bureaucracy is a corrupt and voracious monster. Trying to improve a relationship with something as self-serving and greedy as the EU, is like trying to reason with a boat load of gun toting Somalian pirates, as they are climbing aboard your boat.

An American abroad

Posted on by • Posted in District council stuff, Government • Tagged , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

Notwithstanding his role as the president of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), Bill Bryson speaks with great wisdom on the potential damage the NPPF could do to the English landscape.

If government ministers won’t listen to its own people – Francis Maude, a supposedly clever man at the heart of government, describing their concerns as ‘bollocks’ – perhaps they will listen to an American, who has personal knowledge of the damage done to his country through uncontrolled development.

Pickles talks his normal rubbish

Posted on by • Posted in District council stuff, Government • Tagged , , , , • Leave a comment

Bizarre performance from Eric Pickles on BBC TV this morning. Constantly referring to refuse as what sounded like ‘refuge’. Also making an extremely poor pun with the comment, ‘we are treating people like adults and…… not like rubbish’, get it? clever – NOT!

Notice the sudden use of ‘we’ by Pickles in the last bit? Eric Pickles is constantly criticising local government, yet when it’s good news, in his opinion, it suddenly becomes we this and we that. Hypocrisy come so easily to this man, he probably doesn’t even realise he doing it. Actually, on second thoughts, he knows exactly what he’s doing, because he’s all about the soundbite.

Labour trying to cash in on Forces good name?

Posted on by • Posted in Everyday life, Government, public sector • Tagged , , , , , • Leave a comment

As an ex-serviceman with 38 years service in the RAF, I am of course a service pensioner.  I was therefore very interested to read about the issue of service pension cuts being raised at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool.  Apparently, Labour delegates are very concerned that ex-service personnel are suffering a drop in their pensions because of the government’s decision to change the way rises in benefits are calculated.  The switch from RPI to CPI means that anybody receiving an index linked benefit, such as a public pension, will effectively be taking a cut in income year on year.

I of course have a vested interest in this subject and would be very pleased to see the link with the RPI restored.  However, why has Labour waited until their party conference to make a fuss about this?

Also, why is it only service pensions that they are so concerned about?  What about all the other public servants who are now, or soon will be, on a pension and are receiving a year on year cut in what may be their only source of income?

Could it be that the Labour Party is cynically seeking to cash in on the current high regard the military is enjoying in the public’s eye?  If there were no servicemen and women returning from Afganistan dead, or suffering from horrific and life changing injuries, would this item of even been discussed at the conference, let alone appeared on an agenda?

A failed Facebook posting

Posted on by • Posted in District council stuff, Government • Tagged , • Leave a comment

Even the Policy Exchange turns on the #NPPF – Mail

Interestingly, this anti-NPPF story coincides with the release of a briefing note on the Conservative Councillors’ Association website, that is intended to give Conservative councillors ammunition to defend the NPPF.
The CCA’s attempt to defend the indefensible, is ill judged to say the least. Trotting out the same junk as the ministers who spend much time beating up local government, on a site designed to support those involved iis local government, is at best ill conceived and at worst arrogant.
Whoever decided to do this, obviously has no experience the way planning works at the grassroots level that councillors have to deal with everyday, or how much more difficult the NPPF could make the job.

Developers say it’s not their fault

Posted on by • Posted in District council stuff, Everyday life, Government • Tagged , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

The link below is to the PAS website and continues the debate started by RIBA, on the issue of the shoebox homes we now provide in this country.

There is a very revealing comment from a building industry bigwig at the end of the article. Side stepping completely the accusation that his industry is indeed shoe horning families in to smaller and smaller dwellings at ever increasing prices, he points the finger at – you’ve guessed it, the planning system and then land availability followed by viability. What a sad reflection that is on the priorities of those who are supposed to be providing good quality homes for the British people.

As long as greedy landowners, who have done nothing other than get their piece of land designated as suitable for development via the planning system, are allowed to make millions from what was worth only thousands and developers willing to pay throughout the nose, we are always going to have this problem.

Given that government keeps telling us there’s virtually no land left for building on, now would be a perfect time to set in process a price control mechanism, combined with a minimum size and build quality standard for all future housing to follow. Indeed, if landowners tried to strangle off the supply in the hope that a change of government would see a return to the old ways of maximum price for minimum efforts, an updated version of the compulsory purchase process could be introduced to allow councils to acquire the land needed at a sensible price. I can just hear all the capitalist turning in their graves!

http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/general/news/stories/2011/sep11/150911/150911_2

Lack of truth, or just a lack of understanding?

Posted on by • Posted in District council stuff, Government • Tagged , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

There’s an interesting convergence emerging in the amongst all the claims and counter-claims surrounding the NPPF consultation. The coming together is in respect of the comments made by John Howell, self-confessed author of the Tories Open Source Planning document and those made by the likes of Pickles and Clark, about what the term sustainable development actually means and how it came into being.

John Howell claims that the presumption in favour term was never meant to refer to individual planning applications, but only to development plans. The problem is, the NPPF refers to plans and decision making in the same sentence over and over again, lending a lie to John Howell’s claims.

Where the convergence comes, is in the claims being made, the latest in a speech today by Eric Pickles, that the presumption in favour of development has always been in the planning regulations in some form. However, dig down and you find that the presumption that has existed in the regulations, actually referred to land that had already been zoned, or identified as suitable for development. Put another way, it is land that is allocated, as in a local plan site allocations map.

So John Howell is right in that respect, the presumption was supposed to be all about plan making, not about individual applications. The problem seems to be, that those responsible for the NPPF, the so called wide ranging expert group, appear to have bastardised the presumption term into the catchall statement that is now causing us all so much angst.

Employment tribunal with a crystal ball

Posted on by • Posted in District council stuff, Government • Tagged , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

I was intrigued to read a recent story about an ex-Labour councillor in Birmingham. Apparently, he was given the boot because of suspicion of wrong doing in the election process. Having thrown a wobbly about this rejection, said councillor stormed off to an employment tribunal – yes that’s right, an employment tribunal, even though he was attempting to become ‘elected’ and not ’employed’ as a councillor.

Even more surprising, having won his case, he was awarded a six figure sum for loss of, well I’m not sure really. According to the judgement, he was awarded, ‘£80,000 for loss of earnings that he would have received in the form of allowances between 1998 and 2004 – the period during which, the tribunal decided, Mr Ahsan would have most likely been a councillor.’

As an elected member, this judgement strikes me as entering some very dangerous territory.

Firstly, it appears to have reclassified councillors’ allowances as salary, which, in the real world, is something that is earned by carrying out a recognised activity, with measurable outcomes, something normally called a job.

These employment tribunal members also appear to have the ability to read the minds of Birmingham’s voters, not just once, but twice. How else could they award this non-councillor cash for a period of greater than 4 years, the normal period between local elections, when he was never actually elected, having been deselected by his Labour Party Association?

Taken to it’s logical conclusion, I think I might well have a case for not being elected Prime Minister – I wonder who Mr Ahsan’s no win no fee lawyer was? Read the full story below.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-14890600

Newspapers now digging for dirt on NPPF

Posted on by • Posted in District council stuff, Government • Tagged , • Leave a comment

The link below is to a blog page referring to a Sunday Guardian story. The blog comment makes the point that, somewhat late in the day, the newspapers have realised that a major vested interest, in the form of a Taylor Wimpey director was one of the four people involved in drafting the NPPF that is now causing something of a storm in the press.

Although the story has some legs, in that asking a major developer to help draft the policies designed to control the excesses of his industry, is akin to giving a fox the keys to the hen house, I hope the focus remains on the planning issues and doesn’t deteriorate into personality based mud slinging. The flawed nature of some of the key elements of the NPPF now needs to be examined in a way that the public can understand and that enables them to make their concerns known to their MPs.

Sunday Times – ‘Wimpey Director Wrote New Planning Law’ #NPPF