I got all the info from Freedom of Information the other day regarding the third party comments for my planning permission. This means I have to go reading this stuff again and it gets kind of upsetting.
It’s all very similar to the objections on my appeal that are all out there for all to see in the public domain on the planning inspectorate website, so not much new shock to be had there. But one thing that is new is that I see my planning officer was getting very chummy with my neighbours, which is incredible, because for the entire process I couldn’t get her to once reply to me.
When the neighbours cut my water pipes, and I had to get my solicitor to get me access to fix it, the neighbour who called me mental also said to me that I would never get planning permission. Now I know why she sounded so sure. They had clearly already decided, somewhere along the line, in a process that may or may not have included certain sweeteners, that I was going to be refused.
In fact, my neighbours were even told I was to be enforced before I was told. My planning officer encouraged the neighbours to keep taking their pictures and sending them in.
The holiday home neighbour, who I won’t name, we’ll call her Katie Hopkins, because that’s who she looks like, has taken so many photos of my plot that she could open a gallery. The other neighbour, we’ll call her Anne Widdecome, seems to have mastered the art of dealing with the council. She’s the one who called me mental and told me I wouldn’t get planning.
Funnily enough though, she build a block of four stables with a concrete base with no planning permission and no consultation with NRW on agricultural land. When she was eventually forced to apply for planning, she got it, retrospectively in seven short weeks. Really?
Any horse owner in Pembs will rejoice at this, and I suggest you all go out and build those stables and field shelters that you’ve been thinking you’re not allowed to have. You can have whatever you like. You just have to put down a concrete base, put in electricity and water and a pretentious clock, and Hey Presto, retrospective planning granted. Any issues, and I’ll give you the address so you can state the precedent. Seems incredible that all these Pembrokeshire people have been making do with shelters on skids and hedgerows for all this time and all it took was a divorcee from Cardiff to come down and open the door.
PCC refused another OPD planning last week – one just up the road from here. They’re going to appeal. So that’s another appeal to pay for taxpayers. That’s two just on this road. Around 40k is a good estimate of price for the two of us. And there are still two OPDs pending locally, which are dragging on.
The council say they’re short on staff and resources, but what seems to be happening is that instead of doing what they’re supposed to be doing, they’re working hard behind the scenes to ensure that OPD never goes any further. They’re in cahoots with neighbours, encouraging bullying and stalking behaviour.
My planning officer wrote emails to my neighbours thanking them profusely for photos, because it meant she didn’t have to bother doing her job and coming on site visits or talking to me or emailing me or replying to me. She got my neighbours to do all her dirty work and then refused me, safe in the knowledge that though I’m homeless, she’s got a nice big farm to inherit, and she will never know what it’s like to have to get anywhere in the world herself, because she’s old money and will always have all the land and farm she wants given to her on a plate.
Why are people like this in these jobs? Why is someone with no understanding of what it means to have to make your own way, employed in a job that needs a bit of human understanding and compassion? I told my planning officer about how anxious everything was making me, so what does she do? She creeps around behind my back making me feel like I’m being constantly watched. I WAS being constantly watched, at her request.
How is this allowed? Why is my enforcement information being given to other people first? Why is she replying to their emails and chatting at length to them on the phone, yet she didn’t return one phone call to me, didn’t reply to one email, didn’t keep me informed in any way.
This is just another example of how the council are a law unto themselves, corrupt to the core. There’s way much more to this that meets the eye. And I will make sure I find out every single fact, if it’s the last thing I do.
Even if I don’t get my planning, I will make sure that no one else has to endure the stalking and crazy-making behaviours of neighbours encouraged by planning officers.
I’m not the only one. As I dig around I’m finding more and more evidence for underhand activity, bullying and ruthless cavorting with objectors being used against applicants. And bit by bit, I’ll expose the bloody lot. Like OPD isn’t hard enough, without being a single woman in a rural area surrounded by NIMBYs who think – who KNOW – that the council are on their side.
It’s like a scene from Hot Fuzz. They’re all in it together. For the greater good? Their accusations are even more than mental. I tether my goats? Nope.. I don’t even tether my horses. And I have a holding number. And my cats are neutered. And the pest control is the cats you numbskulls.
And what about the scrapyard next door that none of you seem to notice with the bus and the engines and the squatter? And predators to my ducks? It’s your dogs that killed my ducks! I have photos! And how are you on my private facebook page? Private account? Or fake profile? How bored are you all? I’d get you all a jigsaw each, but you’d probably only be interested if it had a picture of me on it.
So, now you all have your research degrees on Tess Delaney, what are you gonna use them for? You gonna teach a class on Tess Delaney? Mastermind? Specialist subject, Tess Delaney?
And you call me mental…
Postcards from the Hedge 