October 12th, 2022

Residential success in Worcester in the face of unreasonable opposition from the Local Authority
 
Wreyland were engaged in August by a householder at the end of their tether with Worcester City Council's Planning Department.

The Householder had, during Covid, converted her garage to provide for annexe accommodation to serve friends and family. 

Inexplicably and without any justification the Local Authority hounded the householder, first telling them to submit for householder planning permission, and then telling her to withdraw her application and re-submit for a separate dwelling, which she did not want, before refusing both applications and threatening her with Enforcement Action.

Wreyland were engaged to remedy the situation. We re-submitted the application together with a comprehensive planning argument which introduced the Local Authority to a range of niche, far-out concepts such as the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and their own Local Plan and the National Planning Policy Framework. We also took the Planning Officer on a virtual tour of their own area, showing them multiple very similar proposals determined positively by their own colleagues elsewhere in the city before then questioning them as to why they felt they could treat our applicant differently when in the case of North Wiltshire District Council v Secretary of State for the Environment and Clover (1993) it was held that “consistency is self-evidently important to both developers and development control authorities and for the purpose of securing public confidence in the operation of the development control system."

Planning Permission reluctantly followed, and we are pleased to have secured a positive outcome for a householder after unreasonable, pointless bullying opposition to a perfectly reasonable proposal by the Local Authority.

Simple planning should not need the support of a Planning Consultant. One wonders how many other householders have suffered the same fate.

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