2: Local Plan Policies
FBE.2
FBE.3
FT.4

3: Residential Design Guide
Density
Housing Balance
Open Space and Wildlife

4: Grounds for Objection
Highways
Amenity
Policy
Environment

5: Similar Applications

6: The Objection
Layout
Copy to Councillors
Parish Council

7: Property Law
Easements
Easement of Light
Right of Way

8: Planning lexicon

9: The Ombudsman

10: FODDC

11: Links

If you make a mistake and are found out, do you admit to it and apologise? Well not if you are the FODDC. The Legal services department, headed by Laurence Harding, failed miserably to protect the interests of the villagers of Littledean when drawing up an easement requiring a developer to provide car parking spaces in exchange for access. This is well hidden in the minutes of the Executive committee meeting:

a) The Executive Committee decision of August 2002 was taken following the Ad Hoc Scrutiny Committee, and the decision to grant an easement without the building of car parking spaces represents a reversal of that decision.

b) The planning permission cannot insist on including a provision for the partial rebuild of the car park, and for this reason the easement should have included this provision before it was signed.

The local weekly newspaper, The Forester,  was not fooled by this and reported:

The Forest planning authority has been out-maneuvered by the developer in the long running Littledean car park saga, members of the district council’s executive committee heard last week. It has been a sad and sorry business and now it’s time to draw a line under it all, members heard.

Not content to hold their heads in shame and apologise, councillors went on the offensive against the very villagers they had failed; Councillor Mike Herbert is reported to have said "We should not give the Parish Council one penny. We've already given them every consideration and bent over backwards to help them"

I trust that councillor Herbert will not find it necessary to help me in the future

Footnote: The developer who out-maneuvered the entire council planning and legal departments is in fact a councillor for nearby Ruspidge and Soudley Parish.

The thoughts of Chairman Hannaby

Planning officers are supposed to offer impartial advice to elected councillors on the legal and technical aspects of planning. It seems that planning officers employed by this council feel they are competent to go much further, offering advice on social engineering. The following extract is from the minutes of the planning committee meetings: