YDNPA – Planning issues in Wensleydale
This is a fuller report of the annual meeting of Aysgarth and District parish council on May 19, 2010, which was attended by Peter Watson, chief of planning for the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority (YDNPA), County Coun John Blackie and Dt Coun Yvonne Peacock (chairman of Richmondshire District Council).
Coun Alison Sayer: “I just want to say that we are trying to work with you (the YDNPA). We need to see plans and we need to see what is going on. Lot’s of the older generation looked after this area before it became a National Park – we want our beautiful area to stay as it is”.
Coun Peter Windle: “We are just concerned that nobody is taking any notice of us. We had a genuine complaint about various aspects of planning where the plans aren’t complied with. We want you to explain in general terms what should happen and what we can expect from the planning department in the future so we can avoid a repetition of these problems we have been having.”
As an illustration he referred to the two cottages that have been built in the Outgang at Thornton Rust. A retrospective planning application for those will be discussed at the Authority’s planning committee meeting on Tuesday, June 8. As new amended plans were expected the parish council clerk asked if they would have time to comment on these should they be delivered to the Authority just before the meeting. Mr Watson said the parish council would see them as soon as the National Park did. He and County Coun John Blackie said that the planning committee was determined to make a decision on June 8 and that would be made on the latest plans received. “There will be no further extensions,” said Coun Blackie.
Coun Brian McGregor: “If you don’t take a stand on this one you are just wasting your time – your time and our time”.
Coun Peter Windle: “We actually complained to the authority about it when it was at foundation level – and nothing was done. We did have a meeting with whoever from the planning department (who said) that it was in the wrong place. It is the process that we are complaining about – or wish to rectify”.
Coun McGregor: “Once the authority had been informed that the foundations were in the wrong place, shouldn’t (it) be sorted immediately? ”
Mr Watson: “Ordinarily yes – we do get enforcement officers to get out and look at sites but there has been disruption recently because of staff turnover but ordinarily someone should get out there fairly early. There are targets for dealing with these things… although in this case it has taken quite a while. The way it should work is that (a parish council or an individual) makes a complaint. The case is logged and an enforcement officer goes and inspects it. If they find that the works are proceeding in a way that isn’t in accord with the plans … then a series of steps start being pursued. That leads ultimately to a decision being taken that it needs enforcement action or that although it may not be in accordance with planning its not so serious as to justify enforcement action. One thing that isn’t always understood is that enforcement is not an automatic reaction to an unauthorised development. It is a discretionary process – you first have to assess whether you would have approved it any way. But those cases where there is real harm, or something is completely unauthorised and needs regularising it does follow from there that the person is asked to submit a retrospective application or asked to carry out various remedial works. If they don’t do that and it is serious enough it ends up with an enforcement notice being served.”
Coun John Blackie described the swift action taken recently when an illegal access route was made across Thornton Rust village green to a construction site. “There was a very swift reaction to your concerns and complaint and the officer came out the same day and eventually we got a very satisfactory solution. I think that is how the Authority would like the new enforcement regime to work. The old one didn’t do the job. Good enforcement does rely on people acting quickly before the damage is done, before there are entrenched positions on either side.” He added that there were those, however, who knew all the tricks of the trade and were determined to drive coach and horses in and around planning regulations.
Coun Windle: “I have a view (that) once an application has been approved, and all the plans have been submitted, then someone in the planning department would see it through every stage (from foundations) until it was finished. And once it was finished visit it again to ensure that everything that is required has been completed. There are numerous cases in the Dales where that never happens.”
Coun McGregor mentioned a situation where someone had been told the put in screening but hadn’t done so. After several years the Authority had decided it was not expedient to pursue enforcement.
Mr Watson: “We haven’t got the resources to go and visit every site at a series of stages. We are partly reliant on people complaining about things – and partly on our officers making site visits. We probably rely partly on building control regulators who do check on the building as it goes up and do alert us if things are going badly wrong.” He and Coun Blackie said that the new enforcement system included a computerised database so that it would be easier to check if conditions on specific planning permissions had been met within a certain time scale.
The parish councillors asked about seeing amended plans.
Mr Watson: “If you said you were completely happy with (a planning application) but we subsequently negotiated an improvement we probably wouldn’t re-consult you because you hadn’t expressed a concern about some aspect of it. We re-consult on things that interested you or caused you to comment the first time round. I am talking about a situation where we start with a particular thing and we try and negotiate to make it better, to make it smaller or to improve the design or something.”
Coun Blackie suggested that if there are particularly good features in a planning application a parish council should list them in its response. Then if a planning officer suggested altering the fenestration the parish council would be consulted. He added that if a planning officer was in doubt he or she should re-consult. Mr Watson agreed that rather than stating “no objection” to a planning application it would be better to provide more detail so that a planning officer would check with the parish council again if any changes were suggested.
Coun Robert Walker: “There are some plans which have been changed and got through planning that we knew nothing about.”
As an illustration Coun McGregor and Coun Jane Huntington described the situation with South View in Thoralby. Coun Huntington distributed photographs of South View. For that the parish council had recommended that random stone should be used; that there should be a parking area behind the two houses on the site; that the two dwellings should have a shared driveway and that the hedge should be retained.
Mr Watson: “I think in that case there was an amended plan which was approved to replace the hedge with a wall.”
Coun McGregor: “Why weren’t we told that? We wanted to keep the hedge. ”
Coun Windle: “Generally speaking if we receive some plans we go and speak to the neighbours to see if they have any objection to them. You go through the plans with the neighbours and if they are happy with them then you get a response with no objections or that we support the application. We get it in the neck then when it doesn’t happen.”
Coun McGregor: “We told them that (the hedge) was going to be retained. The original plans that we agreed to was for a shared drive. Now we have solicitors fighting about rights of way between the two houses. It could have been sorted out right at the start.”
Coun Huntington – “Our village street is very narrow and if people can’t park at the back of the houses then they park on the road, and then a cattle wagon for example – we have a farm just up the road – cant get through. And we were told by the planning officer when we had a site meeting that he didn’t want parking at the back because one of the features of Thoralby was that the fields came right down to the back doors. This wanting to keep that landscape feature has actually created a real practical every day dilemma. The verge (is being ruined) which makes the village scape very unattractive.”
Coun Walker: “If farm vehicles cant get through when cars are parked outside the houses, then fire engines cant get through. Mr Watson: I don’t know much about the detail of that development.”
Coun McGregor argued that the parish council should be consulted when sample panels of bricks are prepared. “We should accept what they have in Thoralby not what the planning officer wants.” He agreed that the stone had come from a local quarry but pointed out that it was not like the stone generally used in the National Park. It was, he said, sandstone that had been cut into regular bricks.
Coun Blackie said that in Hawes the parish council had been consulted when sample panels of bricks had been prepared for the affordable housing site there. The councillors understood that originally it was planned to build South View with random stone.
Coun McGregor said: “It is built next door to one of the oldest houses in Thoralby and we were going to have it in keeping to match that. They built a nice stone wall where the hedge was – and built that out of really good random stone. They put yards and yards of wall all the way round – there is enough stone wall around that house to have built the house in random stone.” He added that they had wanted surface water from the site to run into a drain, not through drainage holes in the wall. Mr Watson said that the drainage holes were above ground level.
Coun Huntington said they would take photographs when water poured through those holes and caused flooding along the street. The parish council had been informed that the enforcement officer who had visited the site had reported that the treatment of foul water and surface water at South View complied with the approved plans; and that the agreed landscaping plans did not have a condition to replace the hedge.
There was discussion about the apparent inconsistency in planning decisions for Forelands and Cote Bottom in Bishopdale. The parish councillors also asked about the induction period for new planning officers so that they were familiar with the situation in the National Park; the changing policies regarding renewable energy sources such as solar panels and wind turbines; and how and when decisions were delegated to officers.
Under Wensleydale Councils there is a parish council report for this meeting.