Bonkers Planning

My previous post about Planet Pickles reminds me that earlier this year our Parish Council wrote to our MP to point out a glaring anomaly in the 2008 Permitted Development Order. I reproduce the letter below:

Wonersh Parish Council (WPC) considers that it has an important role in examining and commenting upon all planning applications affecting the parish. Significant areas of the parish fall into at least one of the Green Belt (GB), the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), or the Surrey Hills Area of Great Landscape Value (AGLV). WPC particularly seeks to ensure that these localities are not detrimentally affected by proposed development and Waverley Borough Council (WBC), the local planning authority, has provisions in its Local Plan that similarly seek to protect such areas.

WPC is becoming increasingly concerned that under certain circumstances the changes made to the Town and County Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995 by the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (Amendment) (No 2) (England) Order 2008 inappropriate rural development can and is deemed to be permitted. WPC therefore requests that you make representation to the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) to seek to have this anomaly removed. Details of the issue are outlined below.

 The rules concerning what extensions, improvements and alterations a householder may make to their house without the need for a planning application are clearly set out in the DCLG document “Permitted development for householders: Technical guidance, 2010”. Inter alia the rules

          i.        proscribe any enlargement of a dwelling house which would extend beyond a wall which

a.    fronts a highway and

b.    forms either the principal elevation or a side elevation of the original dwelling house;

         ii.        restrict the depths of any rear extension and the width of any side extension.

 However, there appears to be no restriction to the size of an extension to the principal elevation of a dwelling house if that elevation does not front a highway. Such circumstances are most likely to occur outside settlement boundaries which, in the case of Wonersh Parish, means within at least one of the GB, AONB or AGLV.

Since 2008 WPC has seen and commented upon several planning applications which have sought to take advantage of this apparent loophole, all of which have been granted a Certificate of Lawfulness by WBC. In the latest of these the applicant is seeking to increase the size of the dwelling house by approximately 100% in a manner which WPC considers to be wholly inappropriate for its rural location within the GB and AGLV. Such development would normally be proscribed by WBC’s Local Plan under which extensions outside settlement boundaries would be limited to increasing the floor space of the original dwelling by no more than 40%. Both WPC’s concerns and WBC’s policy with respect to rural development are nullified in this case by the provisions of the 2008 Order.

 

WPC thanks you for your attention and looks forward to hearing, in due course, the outcome of any representation you are able to make.

 

Our MP forwarded the letter to DCLG and what reply did she get (from Nick Boles MP)? Well, yes, DCLG recognise that there is an anomaly. But will they do anything about it? No. They say it's down to the local planning authority to exercise an Article 4 constraint. Now how bonkers is that? You oversee bad policy, recognise that it is bad policy, but ask a lower tier of government to try to straighten it out using an almost unworkable alternative piece of legislation. DCLG get my vote as the worst, most incoherent, waste-of-space government department.