|
Tewkesbury Civic SocietyProtecting Tewkesbury's Architectural Heritage and ensuring today's developments add positively to it.
|
Activities
Planning Application Appraisal
Concern for the built environment is a major consideration for the Civic Society, and the need for an independent organisation to represent the best interests of the people of Tewkesbury is particularly important when it comes to Planning matters.
Such an organisation is the Civic Society and we see it as our duty to view all qualifying Planning Applications and where we feel it appropriate to make comments.
Tewkesbury Borough Council, the local planning authority, recognises the Society as a Consultee in the application appraisal process. The Town Council is also a Consultee and we in the Civic Society do not wish in any way to usurp their elected role in this matter but with our specific built environment focus, to add another opinion.
However, it is the Planning Authority (TBC) that makes decisions, sometimes that is done by the Planning committee, sometimes that power is delegated to officers.
Clearly, in a town which has a large number of listed buildings and is also mainly a conservation area almost every development proposal attracts the need for a planning approval and in many cases Listed Building consent as well. We confine our interests almost solely to the Conservation Area, venturing outside this only where large-scale development or infrastructure proposals would impinge upon the town centre in some indirect way.
The applications that we look at vary considerably in size and impact ranging from minor household works to large scale privately funded commercial projects and public funded initiatives.
Planning Applications currently getting our attention for one reason or another can be found under ISSUES/CURRENT APPLICATIONS OF INTEREST.
One disturbing trend is the lack of consideration given in some Planning Applications to dealing acceptably with waste and recyclable material storage, these will always get our attention.
We have even found cases where assigned storage areas in new builds has been sold off by the developer so leaving tenants with wheelie bins (that should never have been issued in that situation) with little option but to store them on pavements. Once aware of this practice, TBC took action to ensure clauses were put in permissions to guarantee such approved storage for the duration of the permitted application purpose. See ISSUES/BIN BLIGHT AND OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS for more detail.
We are presently greatly concerned about works performed on properties without any application being made so depriving the public and Consultees as well as the Planning Authority of any opportunity to comment. We cover this in greater detail in ISSUES/DEVELOPMENTS WITHOUT PERMISSION
Anyone can follow the Planning Applications being made by accessing the TBC website (here) which is very easy to use. One can search for specific applications or check on weekly lists, narrowing or widening the search criteria. There are facilities to make comments. The Government is very keen to have Planning Authorities digitise their systems, TBC have done this very successfully.
We were alarmed at one time to find that comments we and others made together with earlier versions perhaps of proposals, were all vanishing from the electronic viewable files, there one day, gone the next. So, the “story” of how the proposals were changed, often in response to critical comment, was lost to view. We raised this with TBC and were told that although that practice conformed to Government requirements, they acknowledged the undesirable result and changed practices to stop removing files. Job done!
We do appreciate the convenience of being able to access the digital files unless of course there is a need to go back a long time, in which case there is still a need very occasionally to search through old hardcopy data!
Such an organisation is the Civic Society and we see it as our duty to view all qualifying Planning Applications and where we feel it appropriate to make comments.
Tewkesbury Borough Council, the local planning authority, recognises the Society as a Consultee in the application appraisal process. The Town Council is also a Consultee and we in the Civic Society do not wish in any way to usurp their elected role in this matter but with our specific built environment focus, to add another opinion.
However, it is the Planning Authority (TBC) that makes decisions, sometimes that is done by the Planning committee, sometimes that power is delegated to officers.
Clearly, in a town which has a large number of listed buildings and is also mainly a conservation area almost every development proposal attracts the need for a planning approval and in many cases Listed Building consent as well. We confine our interests almost solely to the Conservation Area, venturing outside this only where large-scale development or infrastructure proposals would impinge upon the town centre in some indirect way.
The applications that we look at vary considerably in size and impact ranging from minor household works to large scale privately funded commercial projects and public funded initiatives.
Planning Applications currently getting our attention for one reason or another can be found under ISSUES/CURRENT APPLICATIONS OF INTEREST.
One disturbing trend is the lack of consideration given in some Planning Applications to dealing acceptably with waste and recyclable material storage, these will always get our attention.
We have even found cases where assigned storage areas in new builds has been sold off by the developer so leaving tenants with wheelie bins (that should never have been issued in that situation) with little option but to store them on pavements. Once aware of this practice, TBC took action to ensure clauses were put in permissions to guarantee such approved storage for the duration of the permitted application purpose. See ISSUES/BIN BLIGHT AND OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS for more detail.
We are presently greatly concerned about works performed on properties without any application being made so depriving the public and Consultees as well as the Planning Authority of any opportunity to comment. We cover this in greater detail in ISSUES/DEVELOPMENTS WITHOUT PERMISSION
Anyone can follow the Planning Applications being made by accessing the TBC website (here) which is very easy to use. One can search for specific applications or check on weekly lists, narrowing or widening the search criteria. There are facilities to make comments. The Government is very keen to have Planning Authorities digitise their systems, TBC have done this very successfully.
We were alarmed at one time to find that comments we and others made together with earlier versions perhaps of proposals, were all vanishing from the electronic viewable files, there one day, gone the next. So, the “story” of how the proposals were changed, often in response to critical comment, was lost to view. We raised this with TBC and were told that although that practice conformed to Government requirements, they acknowledged the undesirable result and changed practices to stop removing files. Job done!
We do appreciate the convenience of being able to access the digital files unless of course there is a need to go back a long time, in which case there is still a need very occasionally to search through old hardcopy data!
