How many times must a community say ‘NO’ before its voice is heard? That may sound a strange question but when it comes to the planning and development process it appears to be the case that our local communities and sometimes the wishes of our local authorities are most often ignored, marginalised or overridden. The reason why I mention this is because locally a public inquiry began on Wednesday (1st February) into Torfaen County Councils rejection of plans for open-cast mining at Varteg, near Pontypool.
For those of unfamiliar with the case, Torfaen County Council had refused permission for 325,000 tonnes of coal to be extracted because of concerns over dust and noise pollution. The planning applicant in this case is the Glamorgan Power Company who appealed against the decision at the inquiry at County Hall, Cwmbran, which was chaired by Welsh Government appointed Officer.
The developer argues at that the proposal is the only way to achieve reclamation of the land. Some hundreds of local residents have opposed proposals (including teachers and parents from Ysgol Bryn Onnen, which is barely 120 metres away).
The proposed opencast development at, on and around the Varteg / the British has been around for a very long time. As a trainee journalist (on the old Pontypool Free Press) I covered some pretty fired up and passionate packed out meetings back in the very late 1980’s. Local people have been living with the threat of opencast and the promise of reclamation / redevelopment afterwards for over twenty years.
I can only hope that the Welsh Government Inspector listens to the expressed wishers of the local community and the County Council and then makes his decision accordingly. Open cast is and is likely to remain a controversial big issue that has blighted a number of our communities in the former mining valleys from one end of Wales to the other.
Three significant issues, that actually apply across the whole of Wales, have been raised, but have been largely overlooked. They are the linked issues of development / redevelopment, the planning process and community consent. One thing I have noticed over the years when it comes to controversial development proposals such as: large scale housing developments (the South Sebastopol plan, Llanwern and Carmarthen West housing development to name but three), the livestock market in Abergavenny, open cast mining, waste incinerators, etc that there is an apparent tendency for repeated applications by developers – regardless of any refusal – until they get the result they want.
Now there is nothing wrong with appealing against a planning decision because a decision to refuse has to be based on sound rather than emotive reasoning. In recent history there have been occasional refusals of planning permission by County Councils, who on far too many occasions have then been overruled by the old Welsh Office and more lately by the Welsh Government. Now part of this could be out down to what might be best described as a form of judicial indifference, or perhaps it’s a consequence of a combination of poor advice from civil servants to their ministers in Cardiff.
The planning process is being undermined, as our local authorities fear the cost implications of planning applications being taken to appeal. My sources tell me (locally) that we have reached the point where Councillors are regularly advised by their officers of the potential costs if this or that development proposal is refused and goes to appeal.
So basically don’t refuse the planning application. One result is that people have become cynical about local democracy and the planning process especially when people see land being bought up, infrastructure work being done and road junctions built to serve planned developments years before any public planning process ever begins.
The current system of rolling Unitary Development Plans and the regional development strategy no longer works, they don’t allow our local authorities to adequately serve or represent our local communities. Our current planning system fails to deliver real and lasting benefits to our communities and fundamentally fails to deal with the issue of over-development.
Our planning process is far too vulnerable to an often developer led assessment of market trends for easy build/easy sell for higher profit many of which bring our communities minimal benefit. We need a far more joined up all Wales development plan and need to develop Welsh Greenbelt which should serve all our communities over the medium and the longer term rather than the relative short term.
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