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Tower blocks

September 7th, 2006 · Posted by Skuds in Politics · No Comments · Politics

A planning application is causing a lot of consternation in town at the moment. It was rejected by the borough council and the rejection was upheld by the Planning Inspectorate but the developers appealed to the Secretary of State and have got their permission after all.

I know the location of the application, and although I haven’t properly studied it with these specific plans in mind, as the development control committee would have done, I suspect that our council’s original decision was correct. I know that just because a building is big and can be seen from another house it doesn’t necessarily make it overbearing – there is a difference between unpleasant and unreasonable – but this does seem like an extraordinarily large building. The planning officers tend to be a lot more objective than councillors who are necessarily and rightly swayed by public opinion and if even they found it too much, and were backed up by the PI I reckon they are probably right.

Having said that, I’ll have to contradict the comments by Claire Denham, the executive member for planning, when she says that “Ruth Kelly has not been down to Crawley”. I met her in Crawley earlier this year and Jayne met her here last year, so thats at least twice she has been to the town.

Of course she will not have looked at the site in question. Does anyone seriously expect her to? Isn’t that what she has an entire department of civil servants for? I expect some of Mrs Kelly’s experienced and highly-qualified experts did come down here and then offered her expert advice which she acted on. I also think they probably gave the wrong advice, unfortunately.

The site does desperately need something done to it, instead of having a derelict and decaying office building, occasionally supplemented by travellers encampments, but a 10-storey building with 270 units?

In the past we would get a developer trying their luck with a 10-storey, 270-unit application and then when they get turned down they would come back with maybe an 8-storey, 220-unit application, get rejected, get an appeal rejected and then come back with a 180-unit application which steps from 4 storeys to 6 storeys which is reluctantly approved. The end result is that nobody is totally happy, but a compromise is reached. Are developers now getting a bit more pushy?

The land is actually zoned for employment and would make a much better location for a new fire station than Cheals roundabout…

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