Wilko and out...

[stuart little]

You omitted charity shops and undertakers.

And Antique Shoppes!

 

[bourbon]

was reading the Wiki entry for Wilko's. Looks to me like one of the directors Has been taking 3 million quid a year in dividends, irrespective of them making a loss or not.

 

[stuart little]

If you have no retail then you don't need any deliveries and maybe when no commercial vehicles have any need to go into the town this will make ULEZ pointless having spent a fortune on it, but don't forget these ULEZ systems can also monitor speed and look at untaxed vehicles etc.

What's the point of ULEZ? If your vehicle doesn't comply, you pay £12-50, then add more pollutant, so therefore ULEZ is pointless - more money for government money grabbers. If your vehicle doesn't comply, it should be NO GO!

 

[John Brown]

What's the point of ULEZ? If your vehicle doesn't comply, you pay £12-50, then add more pollutant, so therefore ULEZ is pointless - more money for government money grabbers. If your vehicle doesn't comply, it should be NO GO!

I think it's intended to be a deterrent.

 

[stuart little]

I think it's intended to be a deterrent.

---as well as!

 

[worn thumbs]

Have to admit that some of our planning officer's are out of touch with what matters.

My own personal experience, I live in an approximately 500 year old flint cottage with hand made clay brick reveals, the planning authority insisted that the extension I wanted to build was stepped back from the front elevation to make it look like an extension this was despite sourcing like for like materials, not a sight line issue, just a vagary of the local planning officer, oh yes the front of the house was blown off during the second WW and replaced with an all brick facade with sash windows so not an aesthetics issue either.

I might be out of date and out of touch with current trends but I used to very slightly know one or two planning types.There was a tendency to believe they were a sort of anarchist and liked to throw obstacles in the path of what they saw as capitalism.While enjoying absolute job security and an index linked pension.

 

[MikeJhn]

Sounds like all Civil Servants, what an oxymoron that job description is.

 

[Richard_C]

It looks like this thread has plunged into an abyss. A post about an occasionally useful retailer going into administration has turned into a grumble about ULEZ and an oportunity gratuitously attack public sector workers about whom the people posting clearly know little. How does Wilko going into administration lead anyone to conclude that the description Civil Servant is an oxymoron?

Moderators, please?

 

[Jameshow]

Had a conversation with a smallholder who said that planning on barns had been relaxed. All barns before 2013 are permitted development. Was considering applying and starting works to get a planning application through.

Class Q

https://timminsengineering.co.uk/do...mission-to-build-a-barn-on-agricultural-land/

 

[Sachakins]

If its permitted development, why do planning application.
There is another route, where,if your unsure, you can apply for a certificate of licence. If issued then the council can't come back on you later. Look on your local council planning, or the planning portal.

But I would be wary of just using permitted development rules.

I checked the national planning portal for permited development of an integral garage at home. Yep, that's well inside the rules.

So as advised I checked for any article 4 exemptions that the local council can apply to an area.

We are outside of any article 4 declarations in my area. Check the Tree Preservation order register, just to be sure, no problems.

So started putting things in place to start, but doing prep work myself, I requested appointments for the building inspector, as its still needed, even for permitted development.

Just as well, got message that permitted development withdrawn from this area.

I challenged the ruling as no article 4 notice applications for this area.

They then quoted back the allowed development was removed when the estate was built in 1995.

I challenged it, as the implication of the newly implemented permitted developments right, over rule this.

But further to and fro the council won't budge.

It will cost me legal fees to challenge it, money i dont have.

Now the kicker is that out of 99 homes on the estate, about 17 have had this conversation done.

Of the 5 I know personally, they all went ahead under permitted development rules.

Now the problem is, when they come to sell, it will be flagged as unlawfully development, so will have to try for retrospective planning permission. Which is unlikely to be given, as if it was, then the likes of people in my situation will then be able to take legal action as a class suit, at minimal cost, but massive implications to council.

So please ignore any layperson advice on permitted development and check first with your local council planning office.

As after all the media hype about permitted development allowing people to invest in home expansion, without the onerous cost and process of planning permission,and associated possible objections, you would think it easy to do.


But if you read all the information on the national planning portal,right down near the bottom it actually says, "...you must check with your local council before works begin..."

So that little caveat, not widely known or reported, could actually scupper any work, pre, during or post completion.

 

[XTiffy]

Richard_C, Virtually all posts end up way off beam. I don't know why criticising planning officers should disturb you so much.
Ministers might set rules but they are turned into planning frameworks by Civil Servants. This accounts for the massive variations between councils on the application of those rules (see the above post). All of the planning consultants I have dealt with over the past 25 years are ex-planning officers as they are the only ones who understand their own rules.
I had a planning application for a flint & brick house initially refused as "not being in keeping with the surroundings", this was 50 feet away from a flint barn. My own experience is that councils in this part of West Sussex do all in their power to say no.
To fulfill one of the conditions I had to supply sizes and a photo of the (Council supplied) wheelie bins and that was one of the easy ones.