2024 UK politics - now with Labour in charge

My limited experience of planning officers is that they defer to "experts" to arse cover. E.g. I had to pay for an arboreal expert to tell them a goat willow was not a native tree and not protected, while a large tree in my neighbours garden that did not overhang my property did not overhand my property. I also had to get a bat specialist out to confirm that bats would not be nesting in the attic that didn't exist, because it was my bedroom.

I feel that some of these things are so self evident that someone with more than no experience could have had my application off their desk with much less work and time. And money.

I don't know, the planning officer could have looked at the tree and determined it was someone else's and nowhere near the work. Perhaps they had a neck injury and couldn't look up.

They could also have looked at the plan and the bedroom windows they were standing in front of to determine there wasn't an attic.

I had a previous job where highways were demanding trees be removed for highway safety reasons (restricting visibility) and the landscape officer was insisting they be retained. Highway safety won on that occasion but it was probably 20 years ago, I think it would be a harder battle now. We also get a regular issue where a Council's design guidance states a requireemnt for street trees and a 'boulevard' layout but then highways want them removed because they create maintenance issues. No-one then wants to make the decision - you would think in having a published design guide that these arguments have been resolved internally already but apparently not.

That was the impression I'd got from my friend... they just have to get on an deal with it, but they are all substatial brakes on the system.

They usually have a specification of acceptable trees but that doesn't stop some highway officers saying no trees at all within the highway. I've also had things such as a highway officer saying there's no way you can reduce the carriageway width to provide a cycleway that meets the minimum standards so you'll have to get an agreement to a sub-standard cycleway only for them to leave at the end of the design process and his replacement refuse to sign-off "the developer" proposing a sub-standard cycleway, why didn't they take extra width from the carriageway? (luckily I had all the correspondence as I knew something like that would happen). Quite often they ignore their own policies and work on the basis of 'that's what we've always done'. Before the thread police come knocking I should make it clear that this sort of thing was happening before Labour were in charge and also the last time they were in charge but introducing guidance and regulations won't necessarily overcome the attitudes that create the logjams.

A proper boulevard would be the solutions - a wide road with wide pavements so the trees can be set back far enough. Not some narrow road, with a narrow pavement with the trees crammed in. But that would take more space and so less room for the 50m2 shoe box houses.....

Wide roads in residential estates aren't great to be honest. One Council we deal with likes its boulevard effect roads for the main spine roads but the corridor includes proper width footways plus separate cycleways and a verge for planting so the "footway" either side is wider than the carriageway for vehicles which I approve of in principle.

I mean, we do spend a lot of time and effort coming up with creative solutions but innovation does not fit well into a process driven system and it's very much a case of whackamole with new requirements added as different authorities see fit.

That doesn’t look very green 🤓

Not sure, but I think the green belt area is bigger than Surrey, but not the building plot. It's not like the Times to be so accidentally so deliberately and intentionally misleading.

I wonder how people would react if the national debt was only £1.5t, but those "left without a seat when the music stopped" after the GFC and the onset of the pandemic had been left to rot, rather than funded via lots of extra borrowing.

I'm not a fan of the Tories, but the national debt pile hasn't just been magicked up for a bit of fun.

I think the resident "lefties" here (and based on voting patterns, I am one of them, albeit not with any enthusiasm) are plenty sharp enough to understand the mutual incompatibility of: "Tories didn't spend enough" and "Tories increased the deficit too much".

But it's all good sport, and every so often you come across someone who genuinely does believe in the Magic Money Tree.

As a lefty I am struggling with how the tories managed to increase taxation while at the same time impose austerity, and still end up with a massive deficit. I am not knowledgeable on this, but either the money was very badly spent (and we know some of it certainly was) or else taxation has to be even higher in order to cover the costs of maintaining the infrastructure, and this may not be sustainable. It rather leaves me thinking that the country is on it's way to joining the third world unless Rachel Reeves can pull the rabbit out of the hat.

Seems sub-optimal