The new news 24 thread

[wuvvum]

2 hours ago, danthecapriman said:

Do they actually take notice of objections then? I was of the opinion that it was just a case of letting the residents have their say then ignoring it and letting the developers carry on regardless! But then, I’m a negative fucker!

That depends on the size of the brown envelope the developer slips to the Council's planning dept under the table.

[Mally]

34 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

That depends on the size of the brown envelope the developer slips to the Council's planning dept under the table.

I'm not sure about that, but I'll ask.

@rantingYoof

[beko1987]

My mums new pressure washer arrived today

She said I could use it first then conveniently* when I'm done myself and my stepdad will find ourselves in the same tesco car park and it'll go into their car. 

Soon I'll have a shiny car too! Never used one of the patio attachments either so it would be rude not to give that a whirl... 

[anonymous user]

1 hour ago, wuvvum said:

That depends on the size of the brown envelope the developer slips to the Council's planning dept under the table.

Because of course all Planning Departments are corrupt, #thanks for that.

[High Jetter]

19 hours ago, HMC said:

Good to read about all the fettling going on; all I did was to take a flattering photo of the Mercedes (The paint is quite rough in parts and it’s been attacked with a golf club at some point) and make an ultra low budget what do we have lying around darth Vader outfit.

Wow - I thought you'd be a bit taller than that!

[HillmanImp]

4 hours ago, danthecapriman said:

That’s actually a useful post, thanks.

Yeah, I think the ruination of the guy and his land stuff was meant a bit tongue in cheek. I certainly wouldn’t do it as it’s just not how I do things, all joking aside.

Tbh, this has been a potential issue for a few years. Plots of land like that are like hot cakes at the moment so I can see why (even if I don’t agree with it and the history behind this particular site is a bit off to develop it). But, fair is fair, it’s his land now and that’s that. I bitterly hate the loss of the trees though, and I strongly believe that at least some of them could and should have been retained. Also, doing that would have kept him in the neighbours ‘good books’ and made the finished site much more in keeping with the area and greatly helping with the privacy issues. Plus, for anyone buying one of these new houses it’d have likely made them more appealing by having a few established trees already there.

One good thing though that’s come from this is that he’s been in touch with us and the neighbour the other side and wants to completely replace both of our fences at his cost. I know that’s for his benefit as well but he didn’t have to offer that. He could have just as easily turned around and told us our fence is fucked and leaning over his way and he wants us to sort it! 

 

As far as the building is concerned (and forgetting about the trees for a mo) I wouldn’t be nearly as bothered if he went for a single house like the rest of the street already is. That would be absolutely fine by me if that’s the way it is. The problem will come if/when they try building a 3 bed detached house at the rear of the property. This will be completely out of character for the area as no other property on this street has this - all are long gardens with nothing at the far ends. Of course this will cause serious privacy issues as that one house will have its front facing everyone else’s rear windows, living room, bathroom, bedrooms etc etc and also it will overlook several private back gardens. But, I suppose that’s our argument when the time comes ref the planning and approval stage.

 

Im desperately trying to get a head start on this though, hence the new trees! I’d like to get them in the ground so they can start growing and giving me the privacy and wildlife back that’s been lost.

Do they actually take notice of objections then? I was of the opinion that it was just a case of letting the residents have their say then ignoring it and letting the developers carry on regardless! But then, I’m a negative fucker!

 

Don't worry, I realised you were being tongue in cheek but I got the feeling others were being morally outraged on your behalf, apologies to those if I was being whooshed.

The houses that were being built on my old lockup were originally rejected because there wasn't enough room for the bin lorry to turn round. They'd originally tried squeezing 3 houses in the impossibly small area but ended up having to go for 2 to allow for this so all sorts of things can impact a build. 

I only know what I did last time and unless someone suggests something better, if you are going to object to it, I'd recommend doing the same. Look for other applications that have been refused locally, see why they were and see if you can apply any of the same reasons on the build next door. 

Even looking at ones that have passed can give you a good idea if they were rejected in earlier applications as the reason they were initially turned down might be more serious on your build, even if it passed at a later stage on that one. 

As far as them listening to you, I've got no idea if it works. I'm not sure what, if any influence I had on the one that was turned down near me, all those points may have come up anyway as part of the planning evaluation. It might be that if you raise a certain legitimate point they need to otherwise investigate it other it will generally pass. Other people will know more. I can just give you my experience on it. 

[rantingYoof]

1 hour ago, anonymous user said:

Because of course all Planning Departments are corrupt, #thanks for that.

If there's nowt on the planning website yet it doesn't sound like there's even an application logged.

(I'm only here 'cuz I woz tagged, like).

Schools and County Councils are absolutely destitute around the country because of ten years of austerity (my local Council literally went bankrupt), so they'll be looking for any way to release a nice lump sum. I would assume they've used in-house solicitors to scrutinise the contact or whatever they had gifting them the land and found it within their rights to sell (legally if not morally). Selling off potential building plots is a nice easy way to make a few bucks, and they can include a clawback clause to try and benefit from the land value uplift. 

You may hate it, but for a broke Council it makes financial sense, especially if it means they can presumably keep providing essential services to people in its district.

Once the County Council has sold it to Joe Public, any actions undertaken by Joe Public shouldn't be hung around the Council's neck. If Joe Public wants to steam in and level the site of unprotected trees before submitting an application so the Council doesn't think of TPOing the lot then they are free to do that. It's likely Joe Public also did this quickly to avoid the parts of the year (May to August) when bats are more likely to roost and emerge. If Joe Public is a developer wanting to simply make profit, he is doing it 'correctly'. It is highly unlikely Joe Public wants to be popular with the locals.

If no application is even in with the Council yet, then any plans you hear Joe Public talking about are hot air. True, he may have favourable pre-application advice on his side, but until it's been approved the plans are nothing more than his dream, and during the application stage public pressure could easily influence the outcome, if it's applied properly and relevantly. 

My advice is to wait for notification of an application (either a letter through the door or a site notice on a lamp post outside, or both), and then go have a look at the plans. If they're disagreeable then begin forming your objections. Objections should be on the following matters...

• Intensity of development
• Design and appearance
• Highway matters (parking, access and highway safety)
• Loss of privacy
• Loss of light
• Protection of the countryside
• Protection of listed buildings, conservation areas and archaeological remains
• Control of pollution and noise

If the application is contrary to planning policy and there are no material considerations that outweigh the conflict with planning policy, it should be refused irrespective of whether a single or a dozen or a hundred objections are logged. On the flip side, if there are no planning reasons to refuse permission then even 1000 objections may not overide the Council's decision to approve.

The applicant's past behaviour is not a valid objection. The selling of the land to the applicant (and land ownership in general) is not a valid objection. The impact on your house's value is not a valid objection. Any Councillors who come out to the site and see people generally doing things deliberately to sabotage the applicant's chances will likely take a dim view of your behaviour. 

Happy to have a gander at any plans when they come in if you like. 

[Zelandeth]

2 hours ago, wuvvum said:

That depends on the size of the brown envelope the developer slips to the Council's planning dept under the table.

I'm not about to blindly leap to the defence of Councils....They are often some of the most incompetent and backwards organisations in the world.  However things aren't often as black and white as it might appear to the onlooker who hasn't had a chance to see what actually goes on behind the scenes.  I've had that look, so can provide a bit of input on what I've seen going on in ONE Local Authority.  I don't doubt for a minute that back-hand deals do happen in some areas, though I was never aware of having seen anything like that were I was.

While I didn't actually work in Planning, I worked quite closely with them during my time in the Council.  Heck, my role meant that I had fingers in pies pretty much across the whole building to be honest.  I was there for eight and a half years, so long enough to see how things work.

Something that it's all too easy to forget about where Councils are concerned.  The person you speak to on the phone, or get a letter from etc may well agree that whatever is going on is absolutely mental.  However the folks who actually make the decisions on a lot of things like these are the Councillors.  The officers who actually scramble around doing the research, figuring out what's actually going to happen make the *recommendations* to the Council in the reports, and speaking at the Council session etc...but there's absolutely nothing they can do if the decision is made to do the exact opposite of what has been recommended (within the scope of the law obviously).  If The Council says jump, you as an officer of the Council have to jump...no matter how absolutely stupid it is.  Believe me...when you've gone in there confident that your project will get the green light as it's going to essentially cost nothing, is going to only have benefits to the community, will paint the Council in a good light and be a good news story all around...and to have it turned down purely because of the elected members all voting along party lines (i.e. the Councillors aligned with one party will vote no if their rival party votes yes) makes you want to smash your head against the nearest brick wall.  Especially when the general public phone you up (I had a public facing phone number and email address so got both barrels frequently!) and you have to explain that you cannot do anything because "it is the view of the council that this action is not appropriate at this time."

I can't recall if small one-off planning applications required committee involvement, I don't think so...I think they were usually handled entirely at the officer level, but the bigger one *definitely* did.

I loved a huge amount of my job.  No two days were the same, I worked among one of the best teams of people I could have ever asked for, and it was great actually seeing the work I was doing having a positive impact in the real world.  It was also great being able to turn around a lot of angry people who expected to get nothing but a canned response from the council around when the first thing I'd usually ask to do when they came to me with a problem was "Okay then, I'd like to meet with you to see the issues first hand and I'll see what we can do about it then."  Discovering that they were speaking to a real human being to was actually taking an interest in what they were talking about defused probably 85% of the angry rants.  Well...except for those people who refused to believe that the Council hasn't actually been responsible for running the bus services since deregulation in 1985 and that it in fact was NOT my fault that their bus was running late...There really was no winning with those calls...and after a few years could usually identify them within about ten seconds - even if they came through on the phone belonging to one of my co-workers rather than mine!  They would see me making the "Put them through to me then..." signal we had before they'd even got a few sentences in.

I also took a lot of pride in the fact that I walked into an infrastructure management role with an £85K maintenance budget that was fully committed and the infrastructure in an absolute mess.  Within a few years I'd got things (mostly!) tidied up, and when we had to shed money left right and centre like everyone else, I managed to keep things going - when I left I was still managing to keep things in decently good order on £30K because I was actually managing things proactively rather than just blindly copying what had been done for the last 40 years.  I also understood the concept of spending money to save money, which is massively difficult to get through to a lot of finance departments!  However it turns out being stubborn can be a real asset working in that sort of organisation, I'm pretty sure they approved a lot of my purchase orders just to get rid of me!

The bureaucracy and political infighting though - especially when things had to go to full Council Committee (no party had overall control where I was - so anything that went to a Full Council session was doomed before it even started 90% of the time) - absolutely did my head in.  As did the tendency of the organisation as a whole to bite its nose off to spite its face, and the complete and utter inability of them to get their priorities straight.  See also: Spending tens (it actually ended up being hundreds) of millions on a new corporate HQ (which didn't work half as well as the old one!) because people thought the old building was an eyesore, and it needed somewhere between £2-5M spending on it to make it good for the next 50 years.  Oh...and they signed a 100 year lease on the building the new HQ was to be built in...many months before a surveyor even set foot through the door, and discovered that the entire building was utterly rotten and the only thing they were able to salvage was the facade.  See also my earlier comments about who actually makes the decisions!

 

 

Everything else aside, don't forget that the bigger developers are absolutely not beyond using strong-arm tactics either.  The "You better green light this or we're walking away from that school we're halfway through building" sort of nonsense does absolutely happen.  There aren't many players at the larger end of the market, so it's all too easy for them to find something they can use as "leverage" against the Council.  Especially given the dire financial state most of them are in.

Yes, I've been there in the meeting and have seen that sort of threat being made in person.  More than once.

[danthecapriman]

@rantingYoof

Thanks a lot for that, very useful info and much appreciated!

For now, I’ll just sit and wait to see what happens. I’m not going to let it rule my life or get me down either, so I’ll just see.

In the short term, they want to get the boundary fencing sorted and I see no reason not to accept his offer on this. It’s a win for us both tbh. He’s told us the whole fence, front and back gardens along that border with his land will be replaced as well as a waist height brick wall that’s about to fall over that forms part of that boundary. It’s a 2M height fence and he intends to upgrade it with 30mm concrete gravel boards and concrete posts, so it’ll be done properly. Good of him to offer this imho.

Once that’s done, I’ll continue with my tree & hedge planting!

When the time comes, I might take you up on the offer to have a look over the plans if you don’t mind. That should give an honest unbiased view.

Thanks again!

 

[rantingYoof]

Happy to help. 

What you might do in the meantime is familiarise yourself with where your local Council digitally stores all of its adopted planning policies and design guidance etc. There will be pretty black and white guidelines on what is and what isn't acceptable in terms of amenity impacts on neighbours, looking at distances between boundaries and buildings, how far windows should be from other windows, what constitutes a habitable room etc. If you get the gen on this now you won't have to scramble around finding it out down the line when you find out the application has been in.

This is 'ours', for what it's worth. It should be comparable between authorities really, although I imagine urban-based Councils (with lots of enclosed streets) probably have less stringent window-to-window distance regulations!
https://tinyurl.com/y73c8wyu (PDF file)

[00833827]

So have some stuff i want to get cleared from end of the garden this weekend so borrowed a trailer using my newly aquired Kangoo.  "Where did that come from?" Hey once i get the garden cleared this weekend i should be ok ? 

[xtriple]

When I went out the other day I noticed a few things which were, er, noteworthy: Police everywhere, cars, estates, vans. In Torbay you can normally go (without a word of a lie) weeks and not see a single Police vehicle so where did all this lot come from? I went through the town centre and while most things were shut up tight there were still the odd people wandering around. I saw two people stopped by a Police car and questioned, not idea what was said but after a few minutes the fols went on their merry way while the PCs went on theirs. I wasn't being nosy: they stopped so far away from the walkers (to keep their social distance) they blocked both sides of the road.

When I went to the park (bad person, BAD!) I was amazed at how much everything had chnged in a little over three weeks: weeds everywhere and growing right through the park benches, the fence that demarks the cliff edge was now invisible behind growth and the llandscape had really changed. It seems that in a few weeks the world would forget all about humans...

[New POD]

Tha day of the triffids ? 

[New POD]

In defence of planners.  My uncle worked as a planner on chelmsley wood on the edge of solihul/Birmingham. In the 50s.  Massive council estate.  He said his one single thing that he's proud of was being the one that insisted that there was a garage available for every single unit. Even a one bed retirement bungalow needs a garage. 

I reckon every new house should be forced to have a double garage underneath it if land is expensive. 

[paulplom]

2 hours ago, xtriple said:

When I went out the other day I noticed a few things which were, er, noteworthy: Police everywhere, cars, estates, vans. In Torbay you can normally go (without a word of a lie) weeks and not see a single Police vehicle so where did all this lot come from? I went through the town centre and while most things were shut up tight there were still the odd people wandering around. I saw two people stopped by a Police car and questioned, not idea what was said but after a few minutes the fols went on their merry way while the PCs went on theirs. I wasn't being nosy: they stopped so far away from the walkers (to keep their social distance) they blocked both sides of the road.

When I went to the park (bad person, BAD!) I was amazed at how much everything had chnged in a little over three weeks: weeds everywhere and growing right through the park benches, the fence that demarks the cliff edge was now invisible behind growth and the llandscape had really changed. It seems that in a few weeks the world would forget all about humans...

I reckon it's the lack of crime happening atm. Therefore not tied at the station doing paperwork/red tape etc.

We noticed loads out yesterday as well. They must be loving the change.

[Alan Prost]

Well I managed to sort the smoking problem out on the x type, EGR pretty caked so amazed it ran as well as it has been.

 

So left to sort out is the rattle which is hopefully the crankshaft tensioner and then the non working parking sensors........ which now work, being a bellend I clearly have not driven a saloon in years and have not as yet parked close enough to set them off! Until yesterday when they kicked in........ so at least that saved a job, pleased I hadn’t started pulling the sensors about ☺️

[somewhatfoolish]

3 hours ago, New POD said:

I reckon every new house should be forced to have a double garage underneath it if land is expensive cheap because floodplain innit. 

EFA; design for what's going to become drearily frequent for many.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

On 4/17/2020 at 12:33 AM, mitsisigma01 said:

Japanese knotweed and asbestos will cost them time and money!! 

Get yours from Notwork Fail!

[Bren]

Chilly and a bit wet in Warrington. I wanted to take the e60's undertray off to give it all a clean - lets see what this afternoon is like.

[Cavcraft]

Mo was totally on the level about the state of the interior of this car, and this is in no way a complaint against him. 

 

Started cleaning the inside of the 406 this morning, the stench is unbearable. Left windows open slightly for a day, didn't make much offs. Got the old Karcher out of the garage, the pump for the wash bit doesn't work though. However bad the driver's seat looks, the front part was 20 times worse before I started. In the end, I used one of those scouring pad on a stick things that are normally for cleaning fish tanks.

 

 

Did the headlining where I could, too. The interior light switch area looks like some sort of brown mottled bakolight, or some old bag who smoked 300 bifters a day's net curtains. Although better it's still horrible by any other standards. Some perfume I found in another car has been liberally sprayed inside.

[Bren]

3 minutes ago, Cavcraft said:

Mo was totally on the level about the state of the interior of this car, and this is in no way a complaint against him. 

 

Started cleaning the inside of the 406 this morning, the stench is unbearable. Left windows open slightly for a day, didn't make much offs. Got the old Karcher out of the garage, the pump for the wash bit doesn't work though. However bad the driver's seat looks, the front part was 20 times worse before I started. In the end, I used one of those scouring pad on a stick things that are normally for cleaning fish tanks.

 

 

Did the headlining where I could, too. The interior light switch area looks like some sort of brown mottled bakolight, or some old bag who smoked 300 bifters a day's net curtains. Although better it's still horrible by any other standards. Some perfume I found in another car has been liberally sprayed inside.

I wonder what the house was like?

[omegod]

I'd consider taking the seats out and jetwashing them , proper minging that is 

[Cord Fourteener]

News to me, my Volvo 440 banger special is more rare than my classic Porsche 924! 340 Volvos with MOTs compared with over 800 924s!!!

[loserone]

Seatac, carpet, headlining, and any plastic trim with no electronics in.  Can you still get "multi solve"? Used to be great for this stuff when I was a valeter

[jumpingjehovahs]

Mo was totally on the level about the state of the interior of this car, and this is in no way a complaint against him. 
 
Started cleaning the inside of the 406 this morning, the stench is unbearable. Left windows open slightly for a day, didn't make much offs. Got the old Karcher out of the garage, the pump for the wash bit doesn't work though. However bad the driver's seat looks, the front part was 20 times worse before I started. In the end, I used one of those scouring pad on a stick things that are normally for cleaning fish tanks.
 




 
Did the headlining where I could, too. The interior light switch area looks like some sort of brown mottled bakolight, or some old bag who smoked 300 bifters a day's net curtains. Although better it's still horrible by any other standards. Some perfume I found in another car has been liberally sprayed inside.

I remember watching some valeting video on YouTube which suggested that the film of stale cigarette smoke that clings to plastics and glass can be just as bad at what soaks into the fabric for holding onto the scent of stale smoke. I think they steam cleaned as much of the car as they could.

Dunno how true it is, but it looks like with this car every little helps.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[stuboy]

Swapped the battery on the galaxy, jesus the old one was heavy..took it out for quick trip round the block as not used all week..

And then..

 

[Kiltox]

If that charger won’t charge such a discharged battery, connect a good one in parallel to fool it into starting a charge and then disconnect it. 

[dozeydustman]

Shock! Horror! Dustman actually does something car related on a car related forum!

 

The old dear next door wanted to go and get her weekly shop but her 107 wouldn’t turn over. I know it’s not an ideal charger for a sealed battery but my smart charger for sealed batteries is kaput ?

She was told it had a new battery when she got the car a year ago but it’s date stamped 2012 so methinks seller was lying git, so quite possibly this battery is on the way out, especially as she only pops out once a week for shopping.

Looks like I’ll be getting her a battery soon.

[beko1987]

2 hours ago, Cavcraft said:

Mo was totally on the level about the state of the interior of this car, and this is in no way a complaint against him. 

 

Started cleaning the inside of the 406 this morning, the stench is unbearable. Left windows open slightly for a day, didn't make much offs. Got the old Karcher out of the garage, the pump for the wash bit doesn't work though. However bad the driver's seat looks, the front part was 20 times worse before I started. In the end, I used one of those scouring pad on a stick things that are normally for cleaning fish tanks.

 

 

Did the headlining where I could, too. The interior light switch area looks like some sort of brown mottled bakolight, or some old bag who smoked 300 bifters a day's net curtains. Although better it's still horrible by any other standards. Some perfume I found in another car has been liberally sprayed inside.

Make a spray bottle with washing machine liquid/powder and a bit of washing up liquid. Spray, scrub with a brush then suck out with the karcher. Repeat a million times! 

 

Looks satisfying! Can't wait to do mine when the weather picks up

[Split_Pin]

Spurred on by my lack of success with the Mini, I continued the theme with the 172.

Old exhaust clamps were rotten as you can see:

Replaced both but 70mm is too big for the one on the tailpipe, clamped up best I can for now.

Tried to get the middle hanger off but the 13mm bolt holding it to the floor is utterly fucked.

Nothing would touch it. Thankfully the rubber hanger is OK, just a bit saggy so I have left it for now.

This is the replacement, a weird set up.