Naturally, our planning professionals never discriminate because that would breach human rights, so here are two points to ponder.

Dear old Bridge Poultry Supplies wanted a new road, so they bunged in an application and it went through like a breeze, in fact they got a very special everlasting kind of consent called a “resolution to approve subject to”! Just like one of Mr. Willy Wonka’s chocolate drops it will never go away. There was a tiny snag of course, they couldn’t actually build their road because they didn’t own a large chunk of the land over which they proposed building it.

So what did Horrid Mr. ( & Mrs. ) Hudson do? They said “Please give us an everlasting consent too!!” and they put in not one but six applications for a new road!! Mr. H even said “Yes!!” to a change to BP’s consent that involved his land. But do you know, lots of little snags popped up and the Horrid Hudson’s never got their little bit of blue paper.

Some of us though can remember back to 1981 when BP put in for an extension. Mr. Amnesian K recommended consent to the committee, but then a tiny snag popped up and it was never passed. Then the Horrid Hudson’s said “Behold, we have a built extension, but no consent – here is an application signed by Mrs. H” and they sent in their identical application. Our planning professionals refused to put it before the committee. “We will appeal !” said the Hudson’s. ”Do so and we will claim costs” said the planning professionals. And it went before the Minister who said the new extension “should not be retained” and there were to be no costs to Wealden for coming along to tell him nothing.

So there you have it, two identical applications signed by different people, dealt with by the same authority, the one is recommended for consent, the other for demolition. Chalk and Cheese? No, just brazen discrimination.


Sequel

Now ( 26/2/2003 ) dear old Bridge Poultry Supplies do not want a new road ( some people change like the bleeding weather ). Want do they want instead? Houses!! They have decided that connecting their factory to the turnpike will cost too much money. ( It also seems that buying a stamp to file the annual return is now too much money for this insolvent firm ). It was an easy decision to come to since having not advertised their premises for sale they had still had an embarrassing amount of interest expressed in it from three large enterprises all of whom could have afforded the road. So what do they do? They withdrew their road application, flushing down the loo the rationale behind expending £1/4M and umpteen hundred hours of officer, revision and committee time.

Now those of us with one surviving memory cell will recall that the pathetic Hudson’s put in lots of road applications similar to B.P.’s, but their glass was always half empty, and anyway the committee had already approved in principle B.P.’s everlasting consent ( the legal agreement was always with the solicitors ), so there was no need to approve the Hudson “vendetta” applications. And so it went on, and on, and on.

There was only one reason behind this withdrawal, and that was to restrict the type of alternative activity that could occur at Bridge Farm. And if any one of the 6 Hudson applications had been approved on the same basis as theirs? Then their withdrawal would have been ineffective, since a Hudson application could have been substituted.

Perhaps the philosophers amongst you will now see how insidious and corrosive it is when local politicians start interfering in the free market ( with the assistance of their professional sycophants who write the reports ). When you discriminate in one applicant’s favour, you have to be assured that his objective will not change. When you discriminate against another applicant, you have to make sure you can gag him.

So where does all this get us ( after quarter of a century )? If they do not get their houses, ( and it seems unlikely ), it gets us right back where we started, looking at improvements to the eastern access where Wealden maladministered in 1978. Compulsory purchase of Mr. H’s garden would be one option, but it is not very ethical to use public money for the exclusive assistance of one private enterprise. That would be discriminatory. Tricky one this!

What goes around comes around.



Sequel

That Hudson chappie really is persistent, no wonder they call him Chester Pester. I had some more correspondence with him recently about the aerial photograph business. He had a notice outside his farm saying “Ashley Brown has declined to call in the C.I.D. to investigate criminal activity within Wealden’s Planning Department” and he threatened to alter it to something unmentionable. I wrote him a strong letter saying that I had investigated his complaint “fully”. I hadn’t of course. What I had done was invite in my two cronies Mr. Johnson and Mr. Kay, ( who cannot “recall” ), and had a chat with them. Sounds like a pretty “full” investigation to me, but Mr H. is not likely to find out. Since we are never likely to run my definition past a jury that’s seen him off, and good riddance I say!

Posted March XX 2003.   The "n th" day and still no writ from Mr. Brown.