At its August meeting, Leith Central Community Council voted to back locals in a bid to bolster the fairly newly formed Pilrig Conservation Area (Breaking news, 9.8.13).
Some residents around Cambridge Avenue/Gardens say City of Edinburgh officials have responded inconsistently to similar planning applications in the area, ignored material objections, and turned a blind eye to breaches of their own guidelines. They spoke in particular about a recent application for a domestic extension into a back-green area.
LCCC agreed to raise these issues with senior Council officials.
Soon afterwards, Councillors Blacklock and Ritchie (Ward 12) opposed granting planning consent for that extension at last week’s meeting of the Development Management Sub-Committee on 17 August. In their arguments, they specifically mentioned concerns about respecting the Conservation Area.
However, they were outvoted 2:6 by other members of the Committee, including Councillor Mowat (Ward 11), who countered that breaches in this case were minor, and that a refusal would set an unwelcome precedent that could stifle development across the city.
In a related matter, LCCC will also draw attention to ‘piecemeal development’ whereby those behind major building projects submit multiple amendments after the original planning application has been granted.
Residents, officials and community councils may easily find themselves swamped and disorientated by the resulting paperwork. The danger is that inappropriate changes slip through as a result.
Some people suspect that disproportionately well-resourced developers could deliberately use this tactic as a means to achieve ends which would not otherwise have been consented.
To prevent this, LCCC will propose capping amendments to one every six months. This would, they argue, force developers to be more careful and transparent at the outset.
After shutting down its creaky Planning and Building Standards Portal to allow for a technical upgrade last week and weekend, the Council's Planning Department yesterday announced:
Please be advised that there will be no Planning Weekly Lists (received and decided) issued this week. The lists will be run and issued by Tuesday 30 August 2016.
There will be no Town and Country Planning Notice publication in Friday 26 August 2016 of the Edinburgh Evening News. And no Site Notices will be displayed on this date. Please be advised that the publication and Site Notices will recommence on Friday 2 September 2016.
Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.
We think this may have been caused by glitches affecting how the current status of applications is displayed online.
Spurtle would be interested to hear about your experience of using the improved Portal once it has had a couple of weeks to bed in.
UPDATE, 29.9.16
At 7.00am this morning the Planning Portal was not working. A message on the Council website read:
Essential Maintenance: The Planning & Building Standards portal was unavailable from 7pm on Thursday 18 August until 6pm on Tuesday 23 August. Relevant planning applications have had extra time added to take account of the outage. Further maintenance on Thursday 24 August will mean the portal is unavailable between 7:30pm and 8:30pm. The online Building Warrant service and Statutory Notices are both currently unavailable.
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Lorraine Moore Glad you have reported this. Definitely something to keep an eye on in the developing leith area. Sad to hear the planning got approved in Cambridge Avenue.
Euan Leitch Rear development in a conservation area, a universal issue: but is it conservation or a neighbour issue?
Anyone else remember having to actually look at paper plans in office hours in the planning department? That would outrage the twitterati today but listening to Maamoun Abdulkarim today has put some things in perspective.
Broughton Spurtle Is there a link to Maamoun Abdulkarim we can share?