This week has been a mixed bag, the highs include some very good outcomes at planning and some very long and drawn out delays to other projects including granting extensions of time for projects that are well past their decision dates.

Best yet is a very keen Parish Council that meets at 9am on a Saturday morning in December.  I am always pleased to be invited and attend these local government meetings since this is a fantastic opportunity to promote sustainable development and to take away any constructive criticism.

The planning system, as one of our clients, so succinctly put it, is like a game of snakes and ladders.  There is no scope for negotiation or give and take, you are either granted planning permission or refused and find yourself back at square one, with no option but to tentatively redraw, rewrite reports and revisit a scheme to the point where everyone is happy and an approval is forthcoming.  At Angle Architecture we endeavour to meet everyone on-site, clients, landscape designers, surveyors, historians, planning, conservation and tree officers. The only people we don’t see is the ecologists who often do their site visits in the middle of the night!