Community spirit

If you really want to know how obtuse, how jaded, how downright bizarre Britain’s planning system is, you need only consult the findings of Lord Walker, the Supreme Court Judge who last week answered the question: should you show deference to local golfers?

An odd question for sure, but one upon which rested the £55 million development of 300 homes on the Teeside coastline in a place called Coatham Common. The five residents who brought the case fought a six-year battle to preserve their local green space which, by the time it reached Lord Walker, had spent longer in court than Perry Mason. His ruling stated that simply because local strollers had showed civility towards golfers on the common did not mean they had lost the right to use the land as a public amenity. And the residents, dismissed as ‘armchair anarchists’ and ‘nimbys (“not in my backyarders”)’ by some councillors, were proved right in law.

To fight a planning application, especially for six years, is a very hard slog. There is no financial reward, a slim chance of success and you quickly garner the enmity of your local authority. More than once, residents fighting the Coatham development, for example, were concerned that they were the subject of surveillance by their council, but when they asked under the Data Protection Act for what information was held by the borough on them, the request was declined.

The Coatham case, which pitted a small community against the combined weight of wealthy developers and unaccountable town planners, was unremarkable. Every year there are hundreds like it. Despite the Robin-Hood-style mythologising however, planning policy is still seen as a political sleeping draught, guaranteed to induce drowsiness in all but the most hardened wonk. It’s easy to understand why – Britain’s planning system is splendidly complicated.