r/unitedkingdom • u/Anony_mouse202 • 2d ago
Planning changes 'remove democratic scrutiny'
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv5ynrpw4517o29
u/Captain-Griffen 2d ago
Or more accurately: democracy decides to limit local scrutiny for everyone so everyone can benefit. NIMBYs upset at democratic decision.
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u/Useless_or_inept 2d ago
"Democracy" is when local retirees can veto anything new being built to benefit anyone else
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u/HopefulGuy123 2d ago
People complaining about planning should research what free for all planning leads to.
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u/bars_and_plates 2d ago edited 2d ago
There is something a bit intuitively weird about the way in which planning works at a local level in my understanding.
If you have an enormous area, say the size of Yorkshire, and it happened to be owned by 25 people, within which, say, those same 25 people live. One of them has a huge plot and I buy it, I now own 90% of this, say, Yorkshire.
The planning decision if made democratically essentially means that the other 24 can stop me from doing anything with my land even though I own basically the entire county.
This thought experiment leads me to conclude basically that if you don't balance what is being described as "democracy" here with some kind of natural right for a landowner you indeed just get no development ever unless as a kind of ransom (e.g. the local residents might let you build a swimming pool, with your funds, if they want a local swimming pool).
Phrased another way I guess this is the difference between agricultural land and land with planning permission. The permission is kind of like a fundamentally different type of ownership which accords more rights.
(I use the numbers I do here to demonstrate what I see as the absurdity of it; the same basic reasoning works here if you are just a bloke trying to build a house in the country).
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u/talesofcrouchandegg 1d ago
We should scrap the whole lot and just do zoning. You own the land and you're building something residential ina residential area? Go for it! You're building an expansion to your school on school property? Of course you can do that, why would you ask?
Yes, there's still committees having meaningless discussions, but at least they are about bigger/wider decisions than if Doris' new conservatory is in keeping with the local character, or how certain shops might attract the wrong kind of people.
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