Supporting a Planning Application

[bojorojo]

A fairly near neighbour of ours who is a widow and retired has been unable to sell her very run down bungalow. It is in a sensitive area for planning and she has now submitted a planning application to replace the bungalow with a house so she can sell the plot with pp. All her immediate neighbours, and several not so near ones, have objected and have been really nasty. They object to everything. Most of them live in already extended or in new houses that replaced small bungalows. She is very upset. We supported her application and used my DHs professional qualifications at the foot of our letter but used our home address. It was published by the Authority under Representations. One of the ghastly neighbours has written a further letter to the Planning Authority complaining about our support saying that public consultation was not intended to be used in this way. Lots of other nasty statements too.DH says the Planning Authority will ignore this letter but has anyone else ever had their support for something labelled as a 'disappointing' use of public consultation? It seems in this village that unless you agree with the self appointed 'protection of our village' group you are subjected to vilification. No wonder my neighbour wants to move. People have been so horrible.

[LaurieFairyCake]

They will ignore everything irrelevant

People are proper twats who complain about nothing. We got planning for an extension and loads of people objected irrelevantly including people who already had the same extension as it would be disruptive and noisy.

One complained we had taken an oak tree down to build it - it was a fucking leylandii spruce thingy stuck in the middle of the lawn.

One complained it would cause parking problems even though it would actually provide 3 more spaces

One said they 'thought we were a nice quiet family but increasing our property size might mean we had more children and there were already enough in the street'

You would not believe the amount of twattage written by them - I'm not even putting the most identifiable things down as it would properly out me

[minipie]

Oh dear, poor you and poor neighbour.

As Laurie says there are certain valid reasons for objecting to a planning application - things like right to light/privacy, environmental concerns, safety. If the objections don't fall within these they will be ignored.

Our local council puts all responses to planning application consultations online. I have seen support for planning applications as well as objections on there. There has never been any suggestion that the consultation is only for objections not support. Indeed I believe most council websites specifically say you can object, comment on or support applications. So your nasty neighbours are talking bollocks.

Good luck. Hope you manage to mend fences with the neighbours (assuming you want to) and hope your elderly neighbour gets her permission and her sale.