And my job. It’s everyone’s job.

When a planning application is approved, it has conditions attached. Sometimes these conditions are that plans must be approved before a certain action can be taken, such as, ‘all car parking must be in place prior to occupancy of the first flat’, or that new materials must match existing. Sometimes it’s a lifelong constraint, such as ‘this annexe may not be used as a separate dwelling place’, or ‘this hedge/tree must be preserved and maintained’.

The Vale Planning Enforcement team does not proactively track conditions to ensure that they are being upheld. I understand that they USED to, but with budget cuts many years ago, this service was stopped. These days, Vale relies on the public to report planning enforcement issues. I don’t think very many people or parish councils know that. I didn’t know it until last year.

Planning Enforcement is one of the most requested services from the Vale. Unfortunately, people usually wait a long time before finally contacting Planning Enforcement, and do it as a last resort, when remedy is often more difficult.

I have an idea that I’m discussing with each of the local parish councils. (You can read about it; it’s item 4 in the District Councillor Report for June 2015, on my blog.) Parishes and residents could track the conditions of each approved planning application, and contact the Planning Enforcement team directly when something goes wrong. It’s fairly straightforward to capture the info; the published decision notice includes all the conditions. We could list those on a parish website, and keep it up to date by periodic review. After the development was complete, only the longer term conditions would remain. This could be an accessible source of community knowledge and awareness, and serve as a foundation for a community scheme for residents to become the eyes and ears of planning enforcement.

My offer is to help set this up in each parish that’s interested. What do you think?