Yuku free message boards

Yes, the domino effect! First one, then the next.

The building was once The Bachelor's Arms. Became offices about 25 years ago.

In 100 years time there will be virtually nothing left of Victorian Windsor and even less of anything earlier.

30 Hotels Planning App

Here is the link to the database on the RBWM website. It is not immediately clear on the website how to oppose the planning application but you will need to write in stating your objections. These will need to be based on valid town planning reasons and regs. For example, access too close to a junction, parking provision insufficient, excessive density, listed building, amongst many others.

As I understand it the Planning Officer will consider (glance at) objections and if they are relevant and of substance will clarify that aspect in their report to the planning committee, and make a recommendation, and the committee will then consider the application and make their decision. They may pass it, or they may require changes to be made to the plan, or they may reject it outright. Then the applicant can resubmit the plan with alterations. Even if the committee continue to reject the application, the applicant can still appeal to the Ministry who will then allocate an inspector to the matter. There will possibly be a public hearing, or at least the inspector will consider all documentation (including objections) and make his decision. Even after that there may well be grounds for a further appeal, especially if the plans are altered slightly to help the applicants case.

The above IS NOT definitive, merely my summary of how it all works based on observations of previous applications.

If there are valid reasons to refuse planning permission, then the officer in charge will take these into account. It is not often that anything will slip past them, requiring a member of the public to fight their case, but it can happen, as with Miss Mellor and Bachelors Acre (opposite this site) and Vansittart Recreation Ground, where local knowledge from fifty years earlier demonstrated that building about 150 flats on the recreation ground had already been rejected by the Ministry.

So it can be done and it is possible to stop local developments, but you must have good reason, with bags of time to throw at it.

One other caveat. It has happened in the past that an owner has been refused planning permission to do something profitable with his land or buildings and so they have been left to rot until they are so badly neglected that they have to be pulled down. Now isn't that handy for the owner!

That is really useful, thanks for that.

Interesting programme on BBC2 tonight about how gardens are treated as 'brown field' sites and are therefore fair game for developers. Their angle, being a gardening programme, was more 'wild life' biased, rather than a 'quality of life' bias but I remain staggered that recent government edicts allow back gardens to be built on. It really never was the case in the past. In-filling it was called, and as such was not encouraged by planning committees.

Remember the attempts to relocate businesses up north and out to Wales in the 60s? The south-east was getting too busy even then. But something must happen to take the pressure off in this part of the world.

I think that they have permission to demolish because they already have permission for a hotel. The fact that they now want to build a hotel with fewer, but posher, rooms, won't affect the originally granted permission to demolish.

Sad but true.

Well done! Carrying on the tradition of the hawk-eyed Windsorian!!

I have a few irons in the fire myself, although I can't pursue them currently. But I shall!

It is the elected councillors who take their places on the various committees of their choice, in this case planning. In order to try to affect a planning decision members of the public can lobby the planning councillors to reject or accept a planning application but the general consensus is that it is very hard to alter a committee decision, especially if the councillors vote according to their local party's policy.

As an example Vansittart Road Recreation Ground (Public Open Space) was threatened with sale of the land and subsequent construction (Vansittart Road Rec Planning 1989) of 149 flats even though there was much public opposition. The Conservative group of councillors, most from Maidenhead and Cookham, were in favour of the plan even though Windsor was short of Public Open Space according to accepted guidelines based on acreage per head of population, and that a similar plan had been rejected some 35 years earlier.

It took the retired Borough Engineer, Gordon Cullingham, with a knowledge of the past history of the area, to prove at a public enquiry that the plans were unacceptable. He was helped considerably by the local press and public opinion. It is therefore possible for members of the public to overturn or halt unwanted planning decisions but it is not an easy process.

There are of course protected areas where development is severely restricted, around the castle for example, and other 'conservation' areas where the guidelines are quite strictly enforced, (see the East Berks College development) but here at Bachelors Acre the older buildings can be threatened. On occasion individual period properties can be protected with various grades of 'listing' if they are of significant architectural or historical interest.

As for gardens being 'brown field', this is, I agree, quite simply outrageous and can result in four over-large houses being built on the site of a single three bedroom house. This reflects Labour government policy in recent years to construct several million new homes in the south-east in an attempt to head-off house price inflation. It suited their plans to allow larger, 1930s, gardens in these plans. In the past 'in-filling' (selling garden space to build another house) was not normally permitted by local planning regs.

There are attempts to protect gardens from this form of development once more by removing them from the 'brown field' category, but don't hold your breath! Fortunately the suspect practices in the world of finance is currently providing some form of protection for the time being...

...which is costing the developer money...

Why am I strangely unconcerned by your news!