Category Archives: Planning

Goodbye to the last petrol station in Botley

The last remaining petrol station in Botley is to be demolished. The BP station in Seacourt Retail Centre is to be taken down as part of the next phase of improvements there. It was covered in a recent Oxford Times story.

A planning application is in consultation with the public. You can see the details and leave a comment for the planning officers on the Vale’s planning register. The deadline for comments is 11 Jun 2015. A decision is expected by 11 Aug 15.

There have been (at least) two previous applications approved (2011, 2013) that included demolition of the petrol station. At the time of each of those, there was some objection by local people to the closure of the BP station. The probem is that once this station is closed, our nearest opportunities to fill our tanks are at Peartree, Heyford Hill, or in Oxpens Road in Oxford (near the rail station). That’s quite a few miles to drive, and quite a contribution to the extant congestion and pollution. In two of those options, you need to navigate the A34. That’s one of the most congested roads in the country. If you are heading south, you travel through the Botley AQMA, with its illegal levels of air pollution. Or, you must travel into town on the bumper-to-bumper Botley Rd. When something goes wrong there, it can take an hour or more to get to the petrol station in Oxpens Rd and back.

The main problem is that loss of a petrol station is not a material planning consideration. It’s not a planning decision; it’s a business decision, between the landowners and the owners or operators of the petrol station.

Planning policy gives some protection to pubs as a community asset, but apparently none to the last petrol station in the area. That seems short sighted to me, especially in this age of environmental legistaltion in all kinds of areas. I think the policy needs to be changed. But I’m unaware that any policy body is looking at this. (I had thought to see if we Lib Dems could do something about changing this policy. But we lost the election.)

In the years since we’ve been aware of the plan to remove the petrol station, no organised community activism has come to light to try to save it, that I’m aware of. I think now it’s too late and this is a done deal. I’d love to be wrong.

81 Hurst Rise Rd – My Comments

Here are the comments I filed for the planning application at 81 Hurst Rise Rd.

I write as the local councillor for this area.

In considering raising the roofline of any uphill property, I think particular sensitivity is required to the loss of sky and sunlight to the downhill property. In this case, the downhill property is also to the north, and so will suffer from this loss of light. The homeowner there has provided compelling photographs to demonstrate the impact.

Please note is is recommended in Vale’s Design Guide that windows of habitable rooms be 12 meters away from the flank of neighbouring house. And habitable rooms must be 21 meters away from each other if they overlook. In this case, there seem to be existing bedrooms that are too close already. We can’t remedy that, but we should be certain not to add to the design problems.

Is it the case that previous work on this house was not carried out to the plans that were given permission? What was the outcome of enforcement action then?

The proposed windows in the roof are velux roof windows, so would not (I think) be a window that one could stand and peer out of. As such, they are not objectionable.

But the loss of sky and sunlight and daylight appears to me to be considerable, and I think the design should be re-addressed to see what can be done to allow the applicant his exta room and still preserve daylight inside number 79.

Vale Tories Promise: Regain Control of Planning

You have to laugh. Tories have had control of the Vale for four years, and they still don’t have planning under control. Here’s their campaign flyer:

Zoom in to note Item 1 in their plan, where Tories admit they’ve failed to gain control of planning.

Vote for a change.

13 Cumnor Hill redux: my comments

Here are the comments I submitted in April 2015 to the most recentl application for flats on 13 Cumnor Hill. And this was no April Fool’s joke! And I intend to follow up on the request in my last pargraph.

APPLICATION WEB COMMENTS FORM
Location : 13 Cumnor Hill Oxford OX2 9EU
Proposal : Demolition of existing dwelling and annex. Erection of a part two-storey,
part one and a half storey principal building containing 6 x 2 and 1 x 1 bed flats and a
one storey building containing 1 x 2 bed and 1 x 1 bed flats. Improvements to
existing access and provision of 9 parking spaces. Cycle parking, bin storage and
landscaping. (Re-submission of refused application P13/V1860/FUL)

Cllr Debby Hallett
01 April 2015
I write as the local member of the Vale council for this area.

VOWH has adopted a new Design Guide within recent weeks, and the section
on rural and lower density areas explicitly pertains to Cumnor Hill. Those design
criteria are a valuable checklist with which to evaluate this application. Height,
mass, how this design will fit into the area, density, parking location and
screening and design principles, etc. are there to ensure our communities’
development is managed well. This highly visible development must conform to
the Vale’s design standards.

Car parking on this corner of Hurst Rise Road and Cumnor Hill has been a
problem for years. Our County Councillor, Janet Godden, working on behalf of
local people, managed to get the county to provide that white stripe on the
kerbs nearest the corner, to ‘suggest’ to drivers that they park further back from
the intersection. These days, the west side of Hurst Rise Road is nearly always
parked up, essentially turning HRR into a one-lane road there. It’s at best a
nuisance, at worst, a danger. This corner needs to be double yellow striped.
That would improve the safety of any access to this property from HRR.
I object to this application on the grounds that it doesn’t confirm to our Design
Guide, parking there is dangerous (although that could be addressed), height
and mass and scale are inapprorptiate for this area, and the buildings are too
close to the neighbours.

Please could the Vale publicly address the issue of the oft-repeated request
from parish council(s) and residents for a proper drainage study for Cumnor Hill
area? What would be the cost of that? What approaches has the Vale
considered, and why has nothing been done or discussed? Does the Vale
agree that it would be agood thing to do?

Botley Redline Area?

The Vale Tories used a Doric definition as their policy for Botley Central Area in Local Plan 2031. Now that the Doric planning application has been refused, another big problem with the Local Plan 2031 is clear.

I objected many times to Doric having a hand in forming planning policy. I was variously assured by senior officers that a) developers have no role to play in policy formation, and b) that it was usual and helpful for developers to have a hand in policy formation. So, which is it? Both of these things can’t be true.

Doric wanted to demolish the Vicarage, Elms Parade and Field House (after seizing them by Cumpulsory Purchase Orders that the Vale would execute, if necessary). Now that their planning application has been refused, there is to be a second plan, with a smaller footprint, which excludes these three properties.

Top two photos are from page 58 of the Vale Tories’ Local Plan 2031. (Click on them to make them bigger and easier to read.) The blue one below is the actual policy, from page 59 of the Vale Tories’ Local Plan.

This policy for Central Botley came from Doric.

Now that Doric have successfully insinuated their pipedream into the Vale planning policy via the Local Plan 2031, how will any other panning application ever be in accordance with the Local Plan? I don’t see how this can possibly work.

If the Vale Planning department and planning committee consider their own policies as material planning considerations, then any planning application for other than the original Doric redlined site would be refused. Wouldn’t it?

I wonder if there is now any way to point out this late-arising problem to the inspector? So that s/he can throw out the ridiculous policy for Central Botley.

Printed (hosted) by Hostgator, 11251 Northwest Freeway, Suite 400, Houston, TX, 77092, USA. Published and promoted by N Fawcett on behalf of Debby Hallett (Liberal Democrats), both at 27 Park End Street, Oxford, OX1 1HU, UK.

My Wins in Planning

I spend time thinking about why people should vote for me.

The main thing I’m proud of is that I’ve been an effective councillor in helping people to object to or fight against unreasonable planning applications. The biggest success was, of course, the fight against the Doric plans for West Way. Many hands made light the work.

Jerry Patterson, most recenlty the Vale councillor for South Hinksey, said of me:

[Debby]quickly acquired a grasp of how the planning system works, and has helped many Botley residents with planning issues…

Learning about how the planning process works was the most diffcult task I undertook. The process isn’t documented anywhere, and I had to learn how it works by asking questions. If I was asking awkward questions, it was even tougher. I once asked the Cabinet Member for planning if I could have a flow chart of the process, so that I could better help resident to understand how it all works, and the points in the process where they could have an effect on the outcome. He rolled his eyes at me. lol!

I learned how the planning timetable works, so can now I can help people to know the right time to get invovled and how to present your concerns so that they have a better chance of being heard.

I can intervene when things aren’t running along as they should, to get updates or encourage actions or decisions.

I learned that many of my assumptions about how things worked simply weren’t true. For example, I assumed all members of the planning committee read all of the Comments posted on the planning website. Of course, they don’t. They can’t. There wouldn’t be enough hours in the day. So they have to rely on the planning officer’s synopsis and they take it for granted that the planning officer has understood the details of everything. Of course, the planning officer doesn’t always get it right. They couldn’t. Same problem of not enough hours in the day.

So I learned how to draw committee’s attention to what I think are relevant concerns and to link them to policy and guidelines.

We’ve had some successes when we work together as a community and a councillor.

Greenacre – 3 refusals
26-28 Westminster Way – Refusal
Bovis Homes – some helpful conditions attached to approval
Doric’s Plans for West Way – refusal
Little Dene – some helpful conditions attached to approval
13 Cumnor Hill – refusal
54 Hurst Rise Rd – 3 refusals, and at least one withdrawn
Oxford Brookes University Master Plan – withdrawn

If I’m re-elected, I plan to continue to help residents more effectively resist bad developments.

One particular problem I’ve noticed was highlighted by the Inspector on an appeal against the refusal at 26-28 Westminster Way. She pointed out that there’s a confusion between the County’s parking standards that define a maximum number of parking spaces (a policy intended to encourage lower car-ownership rates by under-provision of on-site parking) and local reality checks that need a minimum number of car parking sapces (a view that’s intended to ease on-street parking congestion). These two intentions work against each other. I’d lke to open discussions with Vale Planning and County as Local Highway Authority, and see what can be done.

Printed (hosted) by Hostgator, 11251 Northwest Freeway, Suite 400, Houston, TX, 77092, USA. Published and promoted by N Fawcett on behalf of Debby Hallett and Emily Smith (Liberal Democrats), both at 27 Park End Street, Oxford, OX1 1HU, UK.

The Problem with the Tory Local Plan 2031

Vale Tory logic about their Local Plan 2031 just doesn’t hold up to careful scrutiny.

Check this out.

The SHMA figures (Strategic Housing Market Assessment) for required housing over the next 15 years are high. They were established by local businesses based on their projected growth. Companies always optimistically project their own growth. Many people and organisations think the SHMA figures are unrealistically high.

SHMA housing figures were explicitly intended to be the baseline. Local authorities were expected to apply relevant local constraints to come up with a realistic housing target.

Vale Tories have repeatedly said there were no constraints in the Vale, so the SHMA figures had to be accepted as the real, objectively assessed need for new housing development.

Vale Tories propose to build ~~thousands~~ , okay, several hundreds of new homes in the Oxford Green Belt. (Whether they build in the Green Belt, or redefine the boundaries of the Green Belt so as to have access to that land for development, it’s the same thing.) Tories believe the only way they can meet the housing targets is to build in the Green Belt.

Isn’t that the very definition of the word ‘constraint’? If we do not have enough land to build the required number of houses without Green Belt land, then that is a constraint, and the target number of houses in the Local Plan should have been reduced.

I asked about this specifically, at the Vale Scrutiny Committee in 2014, when we looked closely at the most controversial areas of the Local Plan. No one would answer this question.

Vale Tories and their Vale officers repeated, over and over, that there are no constraints in the Vale, so we are forced to accept SHMA figures as targets.

Ridiculous. Illogical. Ruinous to our open spaces.

Emily Smith, Judy Roberts, Layla Moran, Dudley Hoddinott, Debby Hallett. In the Green Belt, Cumnor

Green Belt legislation explicitly says lack of housing land supply is not enough of an exceptional circumstance to allow development in the Green Belt.

A few months ago, Eric Pickles published some new government guidance about this.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/greenpolitics/planning/11139303/New-protections-for-Englands-Green-Belt-unveiled-by-Eric-Pickles.html

Here’s the bottom line (from the article in link above):

A Government source said: “Many council planning officers are telling their councillors that they have to remove Green Belt protection when drawing up their Local Plans, in order to meet [housing] demand.

“We are making clear that this isn’t the case, and they can take into account development restrictions – such ongoing Green Belt protection – when drawing up their Local Plans and determining how many houses they want to plan for.”

#LogicFail

Printed (hosted) by Hostgator, 11251 Northwest Freeway, Suite 400, Houston, TX, 77092, USA. Published and promoted by N Fawcett on behalf of Debby Hallett (Liberal Democrats), both at 27 Park End Street, Oxford, OX1 1HU, UK.

Latest from Planning (26 Jan 15)

This is the latest message from the Vale website, 26 Jan 2015, re: planning

Planning

We’re currently predicting a fortnight’s delay in deciding planning applications.
If you need to apply for planning permission, it would be a great help if you could delay submitting it for a couple of weeks, so we can deal with urgent issues.
We are extending the deadline for comments on planning applications by eight days, which was the length of time our systems was down for.
You can now view and comment on planning applications online. It will take our planning officers a few weeks to get back up to speed with the applications, so please hold off ringing about your application until the end of next week unless it’s urgent.
All planning applications and comments we received either by post or online on Tuesday 13 January and after were definitely lost in the fire. Please resend your application or comment.
It’s not yet clear if we still have applications that we received on Monday 13 January, so please stand by for an update.
If any of this will cause you a major problem, please call 01235 540546.

Vale recovery latest

Emails are back up. Websites are back up, with partial functionality.

See the temporary website here: https://southandvalecouncils.wordpress.com/

See the Vale website here: http://www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/

Planning system is not functional yet (it relies on other systems that aren’t fully up yet.)

Offices are a total loss and will be rebuilt. This may take 3 years. In the meantime, office accommodation is being actively sought. The Vale and South Oxfordshire were fully insured for contents and buildings.

Planning department: By sheer good luck, all the hard copies of Local responses were stored in Abbey House, whilst everything else is backed up. Hard copies of historical planning documents (pre c1985) are lost and are probably not recoverable. Neighbourhood Plan referenda for Drayton and Great Coxwell have been knocked back one week whilst election services gather back up electoral information. Not known how consultation and determination deadlines ar affected. I have asked today for a statement from Planning.

HMOs in our area

HMO’s are ‘houses of multiple occupancy’. This term refers to households where there are several unrelated people sharing facilities. In many communities, HMOs are regulated and licensed to ensure the houses are fit for use.

Recently there has been renewed concern about HMOs in North Hinksey and Wytham ward. So I asked the Vale of White Horse officers about the facts of HMOs in our area. They provided me with information both from a planning permission perspective, and from a licensing perspective.

Here’s the reply I had from a member of the Planning Enforcement team:

Under the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order, planning permission is not required for up to 6 unrelated individuals to occupy a dwellinghouse as their main residence sharing basic amenities such as a kitchen or bathroom.

Under the above order, the use of a dwelling by up to 6 persons does not constitute a material change of use of land from a dwellinghouse (Use Class C3). A material change of use to a HMO (Use Class C4) for which planning permission is required only occurs when the number of unrelated residents exceeds 6 persons. This is a rarity. Most landlords are aware of this distinction and operate within the 6 person limitation. They therefore remain unknown to the council.

I am advised by [an officer] from the Environmental Protection Team that the licencing regime for HMO’s is similarly limited to 5 or more residents and three or more storeys. HMO’s that are two storeys or less are not required to be licensed and as such the council has no record of these. Again the vast majority of HMO’s operate within the above criteria.

[The Environmental Protection Team] informs me that [there are] three HMO’s licensed in your area namely:

98 Arthray Road, Botley
1 Coles Court, Botley
2 Coles Court, Botley

I understand that the the Environmental Protection Team will be updating the information on the council’s website within the next three weeks, so that it has much more comprehensive information regarding HMO’s.