Tag Archives: Permitted development rights

DERANGED ACADEMY TRASHES PUBLIC OPEN SPACE

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StokeLodge004

Cotham School’s determination to fence off their Stoke Lodge playing fields to “safeguard” pupils and keep the local community OUT has moved quickly from a little over-enthusiastic to stark raving bonkers in a remarkably short space of time.

The BATTLE over Stoke Lodge has been RAGING since 2011 and efforts to keep the city council land, used as recreational space by the community since 1947, public were finally thrown out by the High Court last year when it rejected a Town Green registration by Bristol City Council.

Now Cotham School are going ahead with their unpopular £160k plan to fence off most of the 26 acre site using dubious ‘PERMITTED DEVELOPMENT’ rules signed off by council planning officers. These rules conveniently stop the issue coming to a planning committee, despite the fact that the school’s plans are OPPOSED by the community, their councillors and their MP, Darren “Dipshit” Jones.

Although all is not quite going to plan for the school, who, since moving contractors on to the site in January, have been caught UNLAWFULLY attempting to put fence posts through the roots of ancient and protected trees and close enough to a badger sett to endanger the animals. Both actions are unlawful and the school already has been forced to quickly redraw their plans TWICE while on site.

Quite why the school needs to fence off the land, let alone DESTROY our city’s NATURAL HABITAT in the process, is something of a mystery. Many schools use public land WITHOUT FENCING as playing fields and, even, OFSTED, has agreed there’s no safeguarding reason why the land should be fenced off and the community effectively THROWN OFF THEIR OWN LAND.

Why can’t this annoying little school run by destructive nature-hating loonies share the space?

DAYLIGHT ROBBERY?

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Day_Group web

Why would the wealthy and well-connected need planning permission to build this?

Our dear old friends Mordaunt and Ord, that pair of dubious MERCHANT VENTURERS running the BRISTOL PORT COMPANY at Avonmouth, are at it again. Pissing off the locals and paying scant attention to the law while Bristol City Council and regulators attempt to look the other way.

So step forward the DAY GROUP who Mordaunt and Ord have allowed to start building a BOTTOM ASH manufacturing plant in the port grounds without either organisation recognising the need to get, er, planning permission. Is planning permission only for the little people now?

Instead, it seems, our old friend, bent council planning officer Angelo “King Pawn” Calabrese appeared to give the Day Group the nod in August 2015 to build their POLLUTING manufacturing plant – where TOXIC remains from waste incineration will be made into asphalt blocks for road building – within yards of people’s homes. However, the King Prawn actually issued a ‘PLANNING CONTROL NOTICE’ that formally registers a change of land use, not planning permission.

Day Group and the Bristol Port Company are now relying on ‘PERMITTED DEVELOPMENT RIGHTS’. Legislation that allows ports in the UK to undertake development without planning permission on their land for the purposes of shipping or for dock-related activities such as loading, unloading or transporting goods . A manufacturing plant working with toxic material run by a third party is, of course, under NO DEFINITION a docks-related project.

And Bristol City Council have already admitted as much. In a letter sent to the Bristol Port Company on 3 September 2015, just days after apparently allowing the plant to go ahead, King Prawn’s boss Paul “HOT” Chick told the port in plain English and in no uncertain terms, “With reference to [..] ‘Permitted Development’ provisions it is clear that industrial operations ARE NOT included.”

So now, in November 2016, how come this plant with NO PLANNING PERMISSION is nearing completion on docks land? However, thanks to the persistence of Avonmouth residents the council has been forced to issue a PLANNING ENFORCEMENT NOTICE, which should result in the companies, at least, having to obtain retrospective planning permission. Although residents are demanding a STOP NOTICE from Bristol City Council and have called on the EA to SUSPEND their ongoing licensing process for the plant until the case has been decided.

Arguments for ceasing the development are sound when you consider that bottom ash is the TOXIC REMAINS of incinerated materials, which could include heavy metals such as Lead, Copper, Zinc and Barium. While batches tested in the Environment Agency’s (EA) own studies contain as many as 73 different tasty and nutritious ingredients. Why not test the EA’s claim that Bottom Ash is inert and non-hazardous by throwing a lump of it in your fishtank or by licking it?

It’ll be interesting to see, then, how the port, Day Group, the council and the Environment Agency wriggle out of this one so tthat hey can continue their mission to poison the residents of Avonmouth