Some people living near a site where a Royal Mail depot could replace derelict farm buildings felt that the planning system was biased against them, according to a leading councillor.
Conservative leader Alistair McNair made the claim at a Brighton and Hove City Council meeting at Hove Town Hall yesterday (Thursday 24 October).
Councillor McNair asked why the Royal Mail planning application for Patcham Court Farm, in Vale Road, was not discussed at a special Planning Committee meeting as had happened with some other major schemes.
The Conservative councillor, who represents Patcham and Hollingbury, which includes Patcham Court Farm, contrasted the approach with how the committee dealt with the Brighton gasworks planning application in the Labour-held Whitehawk and Marina ward.
The Patcham Court Farm scheme was one of several applications decided by the committee last month but, in May, it held an extra meeting to discuss the gasworks scheme. It was the only item on the agenda for that meeting.
In the past, this has happened for a small number of big schemes such as the £485 million modernisation of the Royal Sussex County Hospital, which was approved at a standalone meeting in 2012.
Labour councillor Liz Loughran, who chairs the Planning Committee, said: “Councillor McNair, I assure you there was no bias coming from the committee.
“I am aware it was a highly emotive application in terms of the representations made by various people. They were fully addressed in the committee determination.
“You are the first person to raise an issue with that determination since it was made.”
A Patcham resident, Paul Mannix, who led a deputation to the Planning Committee, wrote to the Secretary of State, Angela Rayner, after the meeting.
Mr Mannix urged her to “call in” the application and take over responsibility for deciding whether the scheme should go ahead. His request was turned down.
Councillor McNair said that there was little time to fully discuss the Patcham Court Farm scheme because it was “squeezed between” other items on the committee’s agenda on Wednesday 4 September.
He said: “Residents against the Patcham Court Farm development strongly felt the planning system was biased against them. How can we avoid residents feeling the planning system is biased against them?”
Councillor Loughran said that the committee was given enough time to decide both applications – for Patcham Court Farm and the gasworks site.
The committee spent three hours listening to presentations and representations for and against the Patcham Court Farm proposals, sitting through a question-and-answer session and discussing the scheme before approving the plans.
The committee sat for five and a half hours before turning down plans for almost 500 homes on the old gasworks site near Brighton Marina.
A report by planning officials supported the £280 million scheme = and this month the applicant, St William, owned by the Berkeley Group, has lodged an appeal.
It was very clearly biased not only at the meeting but by various departments going back to 2018. Incidentally a delightful semi detached council house next to the proposed depot has been intentionally kept unoccupied for nearly 7 years despite enormous demand for the homeless
The arrogance and attention seeking behaviour from members of the Boomerati is getting more intense the more of them realise they don’t control what other people do with their land.
We should be charging a fee of £1000 per planning objection, and ask specifically the legal argument being had, rather than wasting taxpayer time debating bats, fluid dynamics and “the character of the area”.
Any groups or entities wishing to make representations such as self-styled “local preservation societies” should pay 10x that amount, or £10,000. This will ensure that they focus their efforts to frustrate the council and local electorate with spurious nonsense on a limited number of developments per year.
Individuals found objecting to multiple planning applications shall be considered a “local preservation society” and bill them retrospectively at the 10x rate, enforceable by a penalty charge notice.
The boomerati and NIMBY intergenerational wealth hoarders have enjoyed the last 14 years of a government bribing them with cash benefits and policy power for their vote. Now that the game is up they are having difficulty adjusting to their default position which is quiet, friendly elderly people who lead a quiet life, previously unknown to council departments.
Their existing position of having the power to club together and stop the next generation having anywhere to live within their site (and beyond), or locked into perpetual renting of their homes from these very same elderly is coming to an end.
We’re not going to be taking £300 from the pockets of working people trying to keep their heads above water, and hand it over without means testing to members of the most financially well-off generation who has ever lived, particularly as it’s become transparent that subsequent generations are, for the first time, worse off than the previous.
We must means test the state pension, which is a safety net, not a lifestyle choice. They paid on average enough national insurance through their lives for 18 months of the current rate of the state pension and healthcare, nothing more. The country can not afford to be pumping vast amounts of labour and wealth to this generation anymore, it’s absurd.
They need to sit down, shut up, speak only when spoken to, and pay for their own social care by releasing equity from their mortgage-paid home. It is not up to the tax payer to preserve inheritance assets for the 1 in 4 pensioners in a millionaire household.
These policies are absurd, which only seems even more absurd when you hear these people talking about “taking away their money” when it’s taxpayer money which is no longer being given away to them.
They serve as an example to successive generations living in whatever will be left of the planet in a couple of decades of how destructive greed and wealth hoarding is to society, by people who have trouble thinking of anyone other than themselves in all situations.
Only claiming bias because they don’t like the decision.
3+ hours discussion by the committee is still a heck of a long time.
If they think the council has acted illegally during the decision making process then they can club together to find and pay for a Barrister and take the council to a Judicial Review of the process followed. But it’s a high bar to pass to even get a full review let alone have a decision overturned. And then the council will just have to reconsider the application and remedy any faults then judge found and then might not even change the decision to approve.
I agree with you Chris. Weaponising the legal system with baseless accusations doesn’t do anyone any favours. They end up purchasing lawyers they have to pay towards defending a frivolous claim, and that ultimately reduces the budget for things we actually want done.
If you attended you couldn’t possibly comment.
Sorry should read unless you attended the meeting you couldn’t possibly understand.
You mean this one? https://aisapps.mediasite.com/AuditelScheduler/Player/Index/?id=b5cfd806-085a-4f5f-91bb-a40fb12fa8bf&presID=f38cd0d601e64254875008a9da5164191d
Benjamin,
Not a frivolous idea at all. When your water has been irreversibly polluted and unsafe, don’t feel you can complain to the council. You’re part of the problem
Very true.
That would be true if it had not already been challenged.
It was clearly biased, the Royal Mail were given endless time to discuss anything raised, the council planning representatives were given endless time.
The local residents were given 3 minutes in 3 hours.
There was no “discussion” only an exercise in proving their already made decision. The residents were shut down even when they tried to answer questions. Anyone in attendance would see it was blatantly biased. But as ordinary people we have no voice.
Patcham doesn’t want it. Leave it where it is.